A Tale of Two Thieves
by darthtitan
Summary: Eight-year-old Harry Potter is a small-time pickpocket in London. After a heist goes wrong, he accidentally apparates to Dublin, near the oak trees where Artemis and Butler are waiting to ambush Holly. Intrigued by Harry's sudden appearance in the area, Artemis decides to kidnap him as well. No slash.
1. Chapter 1: The Beginning

**Disclaimer: I do not own Artemis Fowl or Harry Potter. They belong to Eoin Colfer and J.K Rowling respectively.**

A TALE OF TWO THIEVES

Chapter 1 - The Beginning

It was yet another typical morning in downtown London - amidst a torrential downpour, suits rushed out of the taxis and the Underground, scrambling towards their offices. An alien looking on the scene from above could be forgiven for believing that Earth was full of ants rushing to their hills. Of course, both the suits and the alien would also miss the tiny figure bobbing and weaving its way through the morass, snatching a wallet here and there.

Our enterprising pickpocket was a small, wiry 8-year old with black hair and distinctive green eyes. He studiously kept his head down, and his eyes keenly sought out bulging pockets, which generally contained wallets or smartphones,and wristwatches - items that could be easily pawned for food. Of course, if one were to take a closer look, she would notice that all of these items disappeared into a small knapsack, which logically shouldn't have been able to hold so much stuff. Then again, she would also notice that in some cases, the targeted items would almost magically appear in the boy's hands even if he had actually been several meters away from them.

Eventually, our little thief ducked into an alley and briskly marched away from the crowd. He paused upon reaching a heavily rusted door and glared it at intensely until it opened with a resounding "click." Again, one could observe the impossibility of unlocking a door without even touching it, but after her previous observations, this is a moot point.

For our thief had always been a special little boy. He had access to a strange set of abilities that perfectly suited his lifestyle - the ability to fade away to his hideout whenever he was on the verge of being captured, the ability to summon objects from his targets, the ability to make items larger and deeper internally. His hideout itself, an abandoned public works project that the government had never gotten around to demolishing, was significantly larger inside than it would seem possible (a feat that had knocked out our thief for a week).

But our thief hadn't always been so skilled at applying his abilities, hadn't always been a self-sufficient street urchin in London. Once he, like the gray suits that he'd robbed, had lived in the suburbs, among cookie-cutter houses and well-watered lawns. However, unlike the gray suits, he had only seen the dark side of the suburbs - the bullies that beat the weak into submission, the relatives who stuck people into cupboards and used them as slaves, the neighbors and school-teachers who blatantly blinded themselves to the abuse that was occurring under their noses. He had learned from a young age to beg and steal to survive, for he sure wasn't going to get any help.

Eventually, after a particularly vicious beating from his uncle, our thief made a decision - he would run away to London. He was practically sneaking food out of the trash and stealing candy from the kids as it was. At least in London, he could steal more valuable items and leverage them for better food. He was already taking care of himself; at least in London, he wouldn't be nearly beaten to death everyday and could sleep with the stars above him.

So, at age 6, our thief - a certain Mr. Harry Potter - ran to London and to freedom. And there begins our tale.


	2. Chapter 2: Catch Me If You Can

Chapter 2 - Catch Me If You Can

Silence.

Harry preferred the silence to his relative's yells anyday. Silence certainly meant that his hideout was not compromised, so he didn't have to go looking for a new home. Having lived in dumpsters and cardboard boxes before he had gained control over his abilities, Harry could definitely say that this was one of the best places that he had lived in. But the one thing that all of his homes had shared - silence.

Harry was alone.

He didn't hang around with any of the street gangs - given the violent conflicts that they were often embroiled in, he knew that gang membership would significantly reduce his lifespan. He also didn't associate with other urchins either - he had quickly learned that trust was a luxury on the streets as the naive would be stripped bare and left to the dogs.

At any rate, even if he could trust someone to not rob him blind, he couldn't possibly explain his abilities to them. How could he explain that he could teleport simply by willing it? How could he explain that he could transform a modest apartment into a virtual palace simply by willing it? For Harry, "where there's a will, there's a way" was literally true. If he were to demonstrate this to someone, he would either end up dead or exploited.

So, Harry was alone. He left his hideout in the mornings to plunder the suits, pawned off his goods in the afternoon, and brought back food to his hideout in the evening. On the weekends, he wandered off to the library and perused the books there. In the old days, the library had been a haven. Now, it was a summer home.

Our hero's simple existence soon came to an end though.

It was day like any other - raining, gray suits, nothing out of the ordinary. Except for the fact that Harry plied his trade on a certain Mr. Jon Spiro. Of course, Spiro himself didn't notice the missing Rolex watch. But his bodyguard, Arno Blunt, did; rather than rubbing his eyes out of disbelief like a normal human being, the highly-trained bodyguard instead tracked Harry's movements through the crowd. At the moment, how or why did not matter - only the who.

Harry was oblivious to the fact that he had been observed. Instead, he admired the watch discreetly before slipping it into his knapsack. But before he could duck into the alley as usual, he suddenly felt someone hoist him off the ground by the collar of his shirt.

"I believe that you have something that my employer owns," Blunt rumbled.

Harry simply closed his eyes and willed himself to disappear - to teleport back to his hideout. Blunt blinked in stupefaction as his hands suddenly grasped thin air. The boy was gone.

Normally, that would have been the end of the matter. However, to Harry's misfortune, a certain Arthur Weasley, who was on break that day and decided to wander into Muggle London as he was wont to do, saw the entire episode. He caught a glimpse of the lightning-bolt scar, and having been good friends with the Potters, detected Harry's uncanny resemblance to James. Given that Harry's disappearance two years ago had set off a massive but futile hunt for the boy, Mr. Weasley was decidedly curious about the situation.

As Blunt wandered back to Spiro mulling over what had just happened, Mr. Weasley traced Harry's apparition back to the alley and his hideout. He caught traces of magic around the area and deduced that Harry lived here. But rather than confronting the boy directly, he decided to give the good news to Dumbledore.

For even as Magical Britain searched for their Savior, Dumbledore had successfully hidden details of Harry's abuse from them. Oh, he certainly felt guilty and all, but the blood wards had protected the boy from Death Eaters, and his own reputation was far too important to be jeopardized. It was for the Greater Good really.

So, Mr. Weasley rushed into Dumbledore's office, panting, "Albus! I saw Harry Potter in Muggle London. He's a street thief, and I know where he is."

"Excellent news, my boy! I am glad that you trusted me with this information - we don't want the Ministry to get their claws onto the poor boy after all," Dumbledore said, with an easy smile and twinkling eyes. 'Not to mention, I can return the brat to the Dursleys and contain this situation before people start asking why he ran away in the first place,' he thought to himself.

"Gather the Order," Dumbledore stated. "We will go fetch him together, so as to ensure his safety." 'And to prevent the brat from getting away.'

Unfortunately, for Dumbledore, Severus Snape had been lurking behind the door to his office and had overheard the entire conversation. "Ha! The brat's finally been found. Well, I suppose that there's no harm in letting the Ministry know as well. That way, even if the Order can't catch him, they can." And he proceeded to do so.

Snape forgot a crucial fact though - the Ministry was virtually in the pockets of (former) Death Eaters such as Lucius Malfoy. And hearing that Harry Potter was all alone, ripe for the picking, in Muggle London was like waving "get-out-of-jail" free cards to the vile men. They had been missing the old days for quite some time anyway, so they formed a raiding party of their own.

In a stroke of luck though, all three groups apparated into the alley together and instantly began attacking each other. The Order attacked the Death Eaters, the Death Eaters the Order and Ministry, and the Ministry officials simply cowered behind the trash cans. The racket alerted Harry that something was wrong though, and he quickly gathered his only possessions (his trusty knapsack, which contained the day's goodies, and his school photo) before apparating away.

Sensing the apparation, the smarter members of each party followed Harry, who had simply teleported outside the alley into the crowd of suits. Mr. Weasley had taken the initiative to cast a tracking charm on Harry earlier when he had been captured by Blunt, so the Order quickly honed in on him in the crowd.

Harry sprinted past the suits, completely ignoring their valuables for once. He turned his head and saw his pursuers quickly gaining on him. "Why are they chasing me? How did they even find me?" he thought in panic.

Harry may have been a fast runner, but he lacked endurance. His pursuers' faces were getting clearer and clearer, and he didn't even know what would happen if he were caught. "What were those flashing lights in the alley anyway?" he mused as he remembered people falling as if shot by a gun and some screaming in pain (the Death Eaters were a bit too liberal with the Crucios).

His musing was interrupted as an impatient Order member shot a stunning spell at him. Harry ducked, and the spell hit a gray suit next to him. Now, to Harry, the spell seemed to have killed the gray suit for the man fell to the ground unmoving. Looking back at his pursuer in horror, Harry closed his eyes in desperation and thought, "I need to get away from here, I need to go somewhere nearby that I can't be tracked."

His inchoate magic swirled and responded to his fear and frustration. With a whirl and a crack, Harry disappeared just as 5 stunners (from the Order members), 2 blasting curses (from enraged Death Eaters), and 2 improperly-generated stunners (from the Ministry officials, which would actually have gotten Harry to start puking his guts out) hit the spot.

Our thief had escaped. But to where?


	3. Chapter 3: Frying Pan to Fire

Chapter 3 - From the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

Artemis Fowl surveyed the grove with narrowed eyes. A full moon illuminated the sky above him, but he focused intensely on the cluster of old oaks at the center of the grove.

Domovoi (if you say my first name in public, you will die) Butler walked up to his charge and said, "The target's here."

The tension drained out of the genius' body - 'at last, the games can begin,' Artemis thought. Having blackmailed a sprite in Ho Chi Minh City into giving him a copy of the Book, Artemis hoped that his efforts would finally yield results - a fairy hostage.

* * *

Holly felt the magic singing in the air - the full moon and the aged oak trees, along with the fresh, natural air (at least, the Irish Mudmen hadn't managed to spoil that yet) all evoked a sense of peace and joy within her. 'At times like this, I love Recon,' she thought.

She landed gently and removed her helmet immediately. She didn't get to come up to the surface enough as it was, so she was determined to enjoy the fresh air as much as possible. She spotted an acorn on the ground and bent down to pick it up...

"CRACK!"

Startled, Holly dropped her helmet, rolled back, and whipped out her Neutrino 2000. Her head swiveled around, looking for the source of the noise and trying to spot any hostiles.

"Ugh, my head," a childish voice groaned from a set of bushes nearby.

Cocking her head, Holly cautiously approached the bushes and parted them aside, revealing a young Mudboy who appeared to be slowly regaining consciousness.

'Great,' she cursed to herself, 'I don't have a drop of magic, so I can't even shield myself. Better get a move on with the ritual before the Mudboy wakes up.'

Harry opened his eyes at that moment and stuck his head out of the bushes. He and Holly gaped at each other.

"Who are you? How did you get here?" Holly demanded, pointing her Neutrino at Harry's head. 'He could be under mesmer. The Mudboy doesn't have to know that it's set to stun. We'll just have to mindwipe him later.'

Harry shook his head in wonder. "You're not human, are you? Are you an elf, like in the Lord of the Rings stories?"

Before she could respond, Holly felt something hit her hard. Stumbling, she reached along her back and plucked out a small dart.

"A tranquilizer," she thought to herself. Shaking her head and trying to overcome the dart's effects, Holly once again resumed looking for hostiles. She saw another flash coming from behind a pair of oak trees in front of her. The Mudboy next to her immediately collapsed.

"Nice pea-shooter," a cold voice drawled. "It is no match for my associate though."

Holly's eyes went wide as a giant lumbered out from behind the trees. Strangely, the giant seemed to pale in comparison to the figure next to him - a short but chilling figure. She tried to raise the gun to shoot him, but her arms just wouldn't respond. 'We are in a world of trouble...' she thought before falling unconscious.

Artemis looked down at his quarry dispassionately - he felt a moment of regret upon noticing that she was female ('like Mother and Juliet'), but he quickly reminded himself, "Aurum est potestas," and the regret passed.

"Excellent work, Butler. Load both bodies into the truck."

"Both bodies?" Butler inquired.

Artemis nodded. "At the very least, the boy is a witness. We can't leave any loose ends." He walked towards Harry and inspected him in fascination. "But there's more to this boy than that. How did he appear so suddenly in the middle of an otherwise abandoned grove? We've been sweeping the area for hours and can be certain that no one else was here with us. Also, did you notice the light and the cracking noise when he appeared in the bushes?"

Butler hesitantly nodded. As it was, he felt uneasy about kidnapping the elf. But kidnapping a boy too? How far would they go for Artemis' gold?

Artemis, on the other hand, was bursting with ideas. "We have proof of fairies' existence right in front of us. What other wonders are there? What new worlds can this boy lead us to?"

* * *

Meanwhile, back in Britain, Dumbledore had gotten pitch-drunk. He had been _this_ close to capturing the boy. Curse accidental magic! 'Harry must be very powerful indeed to be able to apparate at such a young age,' he thought to himself. 'I need the boy under my control so that I can shape and mold that power. We can't have another Tom after all.'

One thing was for sure - Harry was no longer in Britain. Arthur's tracking charms and all traces of apparition ended at British borders since Britain had refused to abide by the ICW's open-borders treaty. Treaty signatories could track apparition and magic across borders easily, and their law enforcement agencies often cooperated closely. However, Britain had refused to sign the treaty unlike the rest of Europe since it hadn't lost as much to Grindelwald, and Voldemort had ensured that his lackeys prevented the Ministry from ever ratifying the treaty. 'I will have to reach out to my contacts in Spain, France, and the Netherlands. Bill and Charlie can head the search in Eastern Europe," Dumbledore mused to himself. Ironically, he ignored the country right next to his own - Ireland.

* * *

 **Please read and respond! Reviews would be greatly appreciated.**


	4. Chapter 4: Brave New World

Chapter 4 - Brave New World

The Fowls had been a crime family since the early 600s, but it was during the days of Merlin that they truly struck gold. King Arthur and Merlin established Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table in hopes of creating a stable, lasting government. Merlin, ever the idealist, hoped that mundanes and magicals could coexist in a single society.

Camelot's initial success encouraged the Elven King Frond to proceed with his plans to mitigate Mudmen's greed by giving gifts, thereby establishing the tradition of Christmas. In fact, Frond even introduced Arthur and Merlin to other fairies, such as the Lady of the Lake; Merlin worked with the Lady to create the invincible sword, Excalibur, which represented the apex of fairy metallurgy and wizarding enchantment. Meanwhile, medieval astronomers worked with centaurs to identify constellations and planetary movements, which in turn led to the rediscovery and adoption of the Gregorian calendar and the development of the first telescopes. Similarly, elven healers worked with Indian doctors to study exactly HOW magic cured various illnesses, observations that significantly improved the success rates of mundane surgeries. Shadow elves combined their folk dances with the Shaolin monks' aggressive fighting style to create Tai Chi, a graceful but effective fighting form that combated stress and could be utilized even by the elderly. All in all, Camelot became the hub of mudane, wizard, and fairy interactions, and a new Golden Age ensued.

Alas, this halcyon period was not to last. Merlin's daughter, Morgaine Le Fay, disagreed with Merlin's emphasis on peace and cooperation. She felt that wizards were superior to both mundanes and fairies and sought to create a new Magical Empire. To that end, she utilized Mordred to destabilize Camelot and divide her enemies. Ultimately, Merlin defeated Morgaine in magical combat, but the damage was already done.

Arthur and most of his Knights were dead by the end of the civil war; the only survivor, Bedivere, retreated to the forest and lived the rest of his days as a hermit. Arthur did not have any heirs either, so the kingdom fell into chaos as the fragile alliance between the lords under Arthur's banner splintered. Meanwhile, the Great Fairy Schism had split the fairies into two groups, one of which stayed on the surface with the wizards while the other retreated underground. The former retained its magical abilities but was relegated to a second-class status within the Wizarding World. The latter lost a good portion of its connection to magic but maintained its autonomy and achieved prodigious advances in technology even when compared to the mundane world; for the People, science became magic.

With respect to the wizards, a new set of leaders, the Hogwarts Founders, emerged. On one hand, they democratized magical learning among human magicians; on the other hand, they propagated Morgaine Le Fay's prejudiced attitudes throughout the Wizarding World. Consequently, the Wizarding World became mired in the Middle Ages and deeply resisted change during the centuries to come.

In short, the Age of Merlin was over.

* * *

Amidst the aforementioned upheaval, the ever-enterprising Orion Fowl gathered knights into a primitive form of the Knights Templar. Orion utilized these knights as mercenaries as the lords squabbled in the power vacuum left by Arthur's death. Drawing inspiration from Galahad's quest for the Holy Grail, he had his knights collect magical tomes and artifacts from ruins across the country. But in classic Fowl fashion, he auctioned off counterfeits of the artifacts and stored the real ones deep in Fowl manor. To maximize security, he hired a wizard to ensure that the artifacts could only be accessed under 2 conditions: the consumer must be of the Fowl bloodline, and the Fowl must have a wizard with him. As Orion was the only contemporary Fowl who had a wizard friend, he was reasonably sure that the treasure was safe from both outsiders and his own siblings, none of whom even knew a wizard.

Among the artifacts was a grimoire that tracked events in the magical world. It is a little-known fact that house-elves conveyed their history through magic itself in a process called "imprinting." The grimoire, a creation of Frond's elves, communed directly with magic itself in order to get the latest scoop, so to speak. Thus, at the time that Artemis Fowl interred Holly Short and Harry Potter in Fowl manor's dungeons, it had full knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the Boy-Who-Lived.

* * *

Artemis looked at the books in the alcove with great fascination. As soon as he stepped into the house with the captured boy, he had felt an inexplicable urge to rearrange the Fowl family portraits in reverse chronological order. Then, he had the captive press his hand against the oldest portrait, at which point, the wall glowed blue, and a hidden alcove was revealed. 'It appears that I was correct in bringing the boy along.'

'Dark and Dangerous Beasts, Soul Magic, Moste Potente Potions - I would dismiss these books as fakes if it weren't for the manner in which this alcove was revealed.'

'Moreover, if fairies can exist, then this is also plausible...'

Artemis shook his head and turned his attention to the thickest book in the room - the grimoire. He opened the grimoire and quickly skimmed through the pages, his brilliant mind allowing him to translate the Latin almost instantaneously.

'Curses for inflicting unimaginable pain, curses to ensure complete obedience, Dark Lords during WWII' - Artemis' head was swimming. Magic was real - that he already knew from the book. But humans could use it - there were wizards. Moreover, magic could do just about _anything_. The Book and the People had such a limited skill set in terms of magic; their technology was certainly impressive, but their magic not so much. On the other hand, wizards were doing all sorts of things with their magic; in fact, their magic had been so effective that the mundanes still hadn't found them yet (although Artemis opined that rapidly improving technology would eventually circumvent that).

But once Artemis put his initial wonder aside, he focused on the fact that the magical economy, like the People's, was powered by _gold_. 'How to get hold of that though?' he mused to himself.

Formulating plans to investigate Gringott's defenses, he paid minimal attention to the story of the Boy-Who-Lived near the end of the grimoire.

Harry awoke with a gasp. He tried to move his arms and legs but found them chained to the wall. 'How did I get in these chains? I knew that I would end up in prison someday, but someone obviously has a medieval fetish...' he thought bemusedly.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw the elf that he had met earlier chained to a bed. 'How uncivilized.'

"Ah, I see that you're awake, Mr. ..."

Harry did not answer the expectant pause.

"It would be in your best interest to cooperate, young man. You were trespassing on private property. Why don't you tell me how you got there in the first place?" the voice continued.

Having survived on the streets for over 2 years, Harry had met his fair share of shady characters. But none of them unnerved him as much as this voice. The voice's owner was well-mannered, but there was an undercurrent of coldness that chilled him to the bone. It reminded him of the most ruthless gang leaders, who spoke softly and lulled their victims into a sense of false security while they encircled them with their henchmen like an anaconda. 'Not to mention, this bloke's chained me to a wall.'

"As one of our honored...guests...it is only meet that you provide some information about yourself," the voice stated coldly. Strange - Harry couldn't see the voice's owner in the darkness. He could also detect the owner's mounting impatience as the voice sounded like arctic winter now. 'It might be good to say something at least...'

"I don't believe in showing courtesy to kidnappers," Harry rasped. "Then again, I am not sure why you even kidnapped me. I'm just a street rat - I don't have a cent to my name other than the items in my knapsack."

The voice sounded delighted. "Ah yes, your knapsack - the Expanding charm is quite intriguing actually, especially since it appears to violate all known laws of physics. You appear to have created a pocket dimension?"

'Expanding charm? What is he going on about?' Harry thought to himself irritably. All he knew was that he need space for his loot, so he had willed (read: desperately wished with all his might) more space into the knapsack. 'What in the world is a pocket dimension?'

Harry replied as calmly as he could, "I am not sure what you are talking about. I don't know what an Expanding Charm or a pocket dimension is. All I know is that the knapsack was in a ditch, and I need something to hide my loot in. Turns out, it could hold a lot more than initial appearances suggested - I had nothing to do with that.'

Harry felt like facepalming as the voice said smugly, "I never said that _you_ were responsible for the Expanding Charm."

He stared blankly at the direction that the voice was coming from and tuned out the rest of the words.

"Don't worry - we have plenty of time to go through your secrets. I will find out everything soon enough," it vowed with a hint of durasteel.

And somehow, Harry had the feeling that the voice would succeed, regardless of his resistance.


	5. Chapter 5: J'ai Ton Sang, Alors J'ai Toi

Chapter 5 - J'ai Ton Sang, Alors J'ai Toi.

Harry had no idea how long he had been in the dungeons. Had he been a regular 8-year old, he would have broken down a long time ago, but due to his abuse at the hands of the Dursleys and his rough life on the streets before he had discovered magic, he was only mildly bored. He missed his routine, especially with regards to visiting the library on the weekends. He had been so alone for so long that books were his only companions; the dealers that he sold his loot to didn't really count as they kept their conversations as brief and business-like as possible.

Normally, Harry would have escaped the place by now by simply teleporting back to his hideout. However, his hideout had been compromised by the stick-waving maniacs, who had seemed oddly desperate to get their hands on him. 'Why were they willing to kill to get their hands on me? What did they want with me?' he thought with rising alarm.

Ironically, his teleportation magic had merely transferred him from one set of captors to another. Harry wasn't sure whether he had really benefited, but at least he was certain that his current captor wouldn't kill him. 'As long as I remain _interesting_...' he thought with rising nausea.

Harry had a sneaking suspicion that his captor knew about his special abilities. He knew about the teleportation for sure. But he had also labeled his expansion abilities. 'Expansion charm - makes sense, I guess. Somewhat unimaginative though.'

Of course, the other problem was that Harry had drained his energy reserves in teleporting away from the stick maniacs. Normally, Harry felt a warm ball of fire in the middle of his chest; when he willed something, he simply had to tap into that fire and direct it outwards. Currently though, the fire was more of an ember than anything.

Now, Harry refused to ever refer to his abilities as "magic." This is not because he was in denial about his abilities; it was more due to the trauma that he had suffered at the Dursley household. Vernon and Petunia had threatened to "beat the freak" out of him if he ever used the "m" word, and the conditioning had stuck.

Deep down though, Harry had another reason to mask his abilities and isolate himself from others. As the wall-mounted camera focused on him and the unconscious elf, he remembered the past...

 _BEGIN FLASHBACK_

 _15-year old Achilles had the distinction of being the youngest gang leader in London. He also had the distinction of having brought the Rooks back to the top. After Jacob and Evie Frye had retired in the 1880s, the Rooks had suffered a long, steady decline until they were just a motley group of street urchins. They lost territory rapidly as other gangs snapped up older recruits, leaving the Rooks only with the raw and the young. Achilles turned the dynamic on its head by leveraging the Rooks' youth and inexperience. The Rooks' fresh faces solicited higher donations from begging efforts and more food from the soup kitchens. Begging and scrounging alone got them most of the necessary resources without the high risk inherent in theft and racketeering. So, while the other gangs continued to bleed out in numbers as their members were arrested for various criminal acts, the Rooks erred on the side of the law for the most part._

 _Of course, that was the public-facing story. In reality, Achilles' Rooks could look like angels because he had a secret weapon: Harry. Achilles had provided protection for Harry when he had first arrived in London. The young naif that he was, Harry had pledged his loyalty to Achilles._

 _During an inter-gang meeting, a rival leader tried to shoot Achilles. Harry instinctively threw his arms out and desperately wished that Achilles would move out of the bullet's path. To his surprise, Achilles was duly thrown to safety. After the meeting, Harry told Achilles about what had happened, and Achilles suddenly saw his ticket to supremacy._

 _It started off small - "Harry, could you make some clothes? Harry, could you_ _convince_ _Steve that it's in his best interest to leave us alone" - but over time, Achilles demanded more and more impossible tasks. He pushed Harry to his limits, trying to extract as much as possible from his gifts. At first, Harry obliged, both out of a sense of loyalty and gratitude to Achilles for taking him in and out of excitement at experimenting with his powers. But eventually, Harry saw Achilles' ugly side._

 _"Harry, why haven't you delivered the packages yet?" Achilles demanded, his face turning red._

 _"I just delivered 10 crates. I don't have the energy to deliver any more right now," Harry gasped. He had truly started to detest the sensation of traveling through a narrow tube._

 _"Maybe I should have just left you to rot in the streets, rat," Achilles sneered, his face turning even redder. Harry was suddenly struck by the thought that Achilles looked exactly like Vernon and Dudley at that moment._

 _But the final straw was when Achilles asked him to set a building on fire._

 _"We are building up an image of being angels, which allows us to get the same amount of resources with a much lower level of risk," Achilles explained. Harry said nothing, but his expression showed the conflict brewing within him. It was one thing to teleport packages to the docks and convince rivals to leave them alone. They were earning money with the former and protecting their own with the latter. But to actually kill other gang members? When they consisted of kids who were no older than him? That was going too far._

 _Unfortunately, unlike his flight from the Dursleys, this second escape was more...complicated._

 _END FLASHBACK_

Harry turned his gaze to the captive elf.

As childish as it was, he still remembered his excitement when he first saw her. He was so excited because for the first time, he had met someone who was special, extraordinary, in their own way. Someone who was as _different_ and _special_ as he was.

'WE have to get out of here,' he thought grimly. 'I am not letting anyone exploit me or someone like me again.'

* * *

As Artemis perused the Book once again in order to develop a method for bypassing the time-stop, he ruminated over the grimoire that he'd found.

While the grimoire was useful in illuminating the different types of magics that were possible, it was more of a recounting of events than anything. It did not explore the theory behind the magic - how was it possible for a stick to channel energy in so many different ways? - or even list the actual spells that wizards used. For instance, it stated that Dark Lord Voldemort was infamous for his extensive use of the Killing Curse (far more so than his predecessors), but the book never stated what the actual curse was. Without knowing the spells, Artemis couldn't even begin to research how the words or the language shaped the energy or interacted with the wand. 'So many questions, so little time...'

Which is why Artemis was hoping that the wizard that he'd captured would be useful. Based on the grimoire's notes, Artemis concluded that the wizard must have apparated into the grove. Since he did not have any clue where he was, it was obvious that the apparition was accidental. 'A case of accidental magic? That would imply that he was running from someone, which then begs the question of why he would be so highly sought after...'

Additionally, like the People, wizards had been extremely adept at hiding from mundanes such as himself for over a millennia. Just as Holly was the gateway to the People, the wizard was the gateway to a whole new world. 'How do I get him to cooperate though?'

For a while, Artemis dropped this line of thought and finalized his plan for escaping the time-stop. When he returned to his ruminations, he decided to take another look at the books in the alcove. And so, he stumbled upon a thin volume wedged between "Dark Beasts and How To Kill Them" ('I need to be able to replicate magic first without a wand') and "Soul Magic." Artemis rapidly scanned through the volume, and his lips curled into a vampire smile.

"Blood of an enemy forcibly taken," he murmured. "How intriguing."

* * *

Harry looked up as his cell door swung open, and his captor stepped into the light for the first time.

He saw a pale 11-year old with icy blue eyes, attired in a black suit. Harry's first impression was that the boy was a vampire due to his paleness and rigid bearing. His next impression was that his captor was incredibly _young_. Just 3 years older than himself, in fact.

'Then again, perhaps his captor had his own extraordinary set of abilities,' Harry's mind whispered.

Of course, his thoughts on his captor's youth were completely obliterated as soon as he began speaking.

"I know who you are, Harry James Potter," the boy said matter-of-factly. "There is currently a manhunt for you in Britain and most of Europe. Shame that no one has thought to check Ireland," he said with a smirk.

"Now let us cut the pretense. I know that you are wizard. I want to know about your abilities - what can you do, how do you draw upon your power, how do you shape it? Where is your wand? I want to know everything so that I can replicate it myself. I also want you to take me to Diagon Alley, or at least, Gringotts. There is an entire economy out there, ripe for the taking."

Harry shot back bemusedly, "First off, I don't know anything about Diagonally or Gringotts. Also, I don't have a wand. I admit, I do have a special set of abilities, but why should I show them to you? And who do you think you are to think that you can just bulldoze your way into an entirely new world?"

The boy replied coolly, "I am Artemis Fowl the Second."

"Lovely," drawled Harry. "Did Mommy and Daddy forget to give you pocket change today?" he mocked. The fact that Artemis was wearing a suit like the many gray suits that Harry had seen rushing off to work everyday did not help improve Harry's impression of the boy.

Artemis' gaze grew more intense, if it were possible. "For the last time - "

Harry exploded. "Look, I'm not sure how much more clear I can be. _I have no idea what you're talking about._ As far as I know, I am the only one with this set of abilities."

Artemis' lips formed a thin line. "Butler," he called.

Harry saw a giant of a man enter the room.

"Proceed with the extraction," Artemis said dispassionately. Butler took out a syringe and a needle.

Harry got a queasy feeling in his stomach. He didn't know why, but he knew that letting Butler take his blood was a bad idea. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw that the elf was also awake now - she was pretending to be unconscious but was actually taking in as many details as possible about the situation.

'Time to bust out of this madhouse,' Harry thought grimly.

As Butler drew near him, Harry swallowed his saliva and spit directly onto his face. Unnerved for a split second, Butler froze. It was enough time for Harry to push his magic into the chains binding him.

The chains shattered, and suddenly, Harry stood free. One of the shattered chains had managed to cut Harry, and blood dripped to the floor from the wound, but Harry had been used to much worse, so he was unfazed.

Artemis' eyes widened, but before he or Butler could react, Harry pushed his arms and magic outwards. Consequently, Artemis was _thrown_ across the room and hit the wall with a thud.

Butler's size allowed him to easily weather the assault. He was pushed back a few feet, but the man mountain was otherwise unaffected. He proceeded to take out the tranquilizer gun and shoot darts at Harry efficiently.

Harry drew on his...magic...and thrust it out in the shape of a wall. The darts hit the wall and fell to the ground.

"Incredible," breathed Artemis. 'I should have pushed him ages ago in order to see what he could do...'

Harry ran full speed at Butler, who tensed and shifted into a ready stance to disable the opponent. At the last possible second, he twisted and then apparated to the front entrance of the house with a crack. He was about to apparate again when he remembered the elf.

"Leave her," his common sense insisted. He owed her nothing. He'd survived on the streets by looking out for himself. He'd been alone then, and he was alone now.

Except she didn't ask to be in this mess any more than he did. And from what he had sensed when pushing his magic outwards, she was completely drained of magic at the moment.

"I am not a hero," he tried to rationalize to himself. "I am just an 8-year old."

An 8-year old who had just escaped a vampire and a man mountain. An 8-year old with serious power. An 8-year old who had killed before. _A figure bursting into flames, hands outstretched beseechingly._

Shuddering, Harry attempted to move forward. But then he remembered being at the Dursley's mercy. At Achilles' mercy. 'No one should have to lose their freedom.' He turned back. 'At the very least, I can create a distraction up here, so that they can't interfere while I free her and escape.'

He pooled his magic into his hands in the form of fire. When the energy was too much to hold, he thrust his palms outward, and _green fire flowed out._

Dragons, tigers, bears, lions - the fire took many shapes, but the net result was the same - the living room was burning.

Exhausted by the effort, Harry closed his eyes and stumbled out of the room. Back to the dungeons it was.

If it weren't for the fact that the living room was on fire and his quarry had escaped, Artemis would have been cackling in delight.

The wizard's magic had lived up to his expectations. Both in terms of versatility and sheer power.

'The banks I could rob with that power on my side. The world would be my oyster.'

Once Artemis had a chance to study Gringotts' defenses, he was confident that his brains and wizarding magic's sheer power could overcome the feeble goblins. 'And a mountain of gold awaits.'

But first he had to regain control of the wizard.

Butler was attempting to put out the fire by pouring buckets of water over the equipment, but to no avail.

Artemis, on the other hand, noticed the drops of blood on the ground. 'Well, I have the blood, at least. But where is he...'

'Ah, of course. He is going back to free our other prisoner. What a noble idiot.'

Artemis smiled like a vampire. 'So predictable.'

Harry stumbled into the dungeons. Cracks had formed on his hand from the fire that he had pushed out, and he knew that the blood was forming a clear trail for Artemis. 'I don't have much time.'

He saw the elf banging against the bed, trying to break her chains. She stopped when she saw him enter the room.

"Err, not to sound ungrateful, but why are you coming back here?" she asked incredulously.

He ignored her. The fire had taken a lot out of him. The sun inside him was once again becoming an ember. He noticed that her chains did not have a lock on them. 'Guess I have to teleport her out with me.'

As Holly looked on bewildered, Harry grabbed her hand and used his last spark of magic to push them both back to the front entrance. He doubted that he could go any further, especially given his low energy levels and the fact that he had a passenger.

They stumbled upon landing. Holly looked at the boy beside her - Harry - in amazement. The human had used magic! Magic! And of a kind that she had never seen before.

And to top things off, a Mudboy - part of a species that epitomized selfishness - came back to rescue her, jeopardizing his own escape.

"We need to get out of here," Harry gasped.

Holly was about to respond when she felt something hit her once again. Unlike last time, she was still aware of what was going on - she just couldn't move.

"A paralytic dart, Captain," the cruel voice chuckled. "I thought that you might want to watch this next part."

With that the voice turned cruel and said, "I, Artemis Fowl, have forcibly taken the blood of the enemy, Harry James Potter, and call on magic to recognize the veracity of my claim."

A white flash surrounded Artemis and Harry.

Harry looked up at Artemis in confusion before shaking his head. He turned around and tried to run when his insides suddenly twisted, and he felt like screaming in pain.

"Harry James Potter, by the blood that I have claimed, I command you to stay within the boundaries of this manor," Artemis stated calmly. Inside, he felt slimy - his father may have been a criminal, but he wouldn't have stooped as low as depriving a man of his freedom. 'Aurum est potestas - I need him to get wizarding gold and keep Holly in check for the fairy gold.'

Harry gritted his teeth and attempted to move, but the pain only intensified. Finally capitulating, he turned back and reentered the house as Holly looked on in horror.

Artemis looked on coolly. "There, that wasn't so hard, was it? Harry James Potter, clean up the fiery mess that you have made in the living room. Then, take Holly with you to the dungeon, put the chains back on both of yourselves, and await further instruction."

Harry trudged to the living room, resisting each step. He threw his arms out and screamed as the fire turned to him and reentered his body. His core filled back up, but this did not comfort him as the blood magic forced him to obey Artemis' commands.

He carried Holly back to the dungeons but stopped right before entering them.

'No, I refuse to enter the dungeons.'

The pain intensified.

'I don't care.' Harry drew on his magic, even as it fought against his body, and focused it towards putting himself to sleep.

'Sleep, sleep, sleep'

As he lost consciousness, his only consolation was that at least he wasn't wrapping himself in chains.


	6. Chapter 6: Let The Games Begin

Chapter 6 - Let the Games Begin.

Holly's mind was still struggling to catch up with what she had just seen - a seemingly normal human boy had just used magic to deflect tranquilizer darts, fling their captors across the room, and TELEPORT her out of the dungeon (an admittedly unpleasant experience that would have made her throw up were it not for her intensive LEP training). If only she hadn't been so stunned by these events - they had been so close to escaping until Artemis had unveiled his trump card with the boy's blood.

Artemis cleared his throat to catch his bewildered captive's attention. Per his orders, Butler had followed Harry and Holly to the dungeon and had quickly taken charge of the situation when Harry had fallen unconscious. Using his gun to prod a dazed Holly, who also had to contend with the disorientating effects of Harry's apparition at the time, back into the dungeon, Butler then proceeded to chain up the two once again. Holly was tempted to unleash mesmer against the two Mudmen, but she noticed that they were wearing sunglasses. 'Inside this dark place? Why would that be?'

"You've made a big mistake, human," Holly rasped. "Release me now, and I won't have to hurt you."

Artemis' lips curled into a sneer. "I was hoping for a stimulating conversation. It seems that law enforcement officials are equally dull above and below ground. As for the sunglasses, they are a means of obviating your _mesmer_."

"How do you know about _mesmer_ , human?" Holly asked startled. Even the relatively small set of humans who were capable of mesmer often weren't conscious about their own ability.

"I know everything about the People, Holly," Artemis stated with cruel smile, drinking in the signs of distress showing up on Holly's face. "Why, over the past few days, you've told us everything - the LEP, the Council, the ritual. There is nothing that I do not know about the People at this point."

Holly stared at him in horror. "No, that's not possible. I haven't even been here for that long."

Artemis stared back at her dispassionately. "Try 3 days. We had you on the drip."

'No! I've betrayed us all. The People will never take me back," Holly thought to herself, gnashing her teeth.

For a moment, Artemis felt a twinge of guilt - in actuality, it had only been a day and a half since he'd captured both Holly and Harry at the grove. Did he really have to play these mind games with his captive? 'Yes, I do. She just nearly escaped right now, and demoralization is a powerful tool.'

"Well, Mudboy, I hope that you're happy with your ill-gotten knowledge," Holly spat out at Artemis. "What is the point of all this anyway? If you know everything, then you know how the LEP deals with these situations. Worst-case scenario, you're looking at a fairy-human war. What are you trying to do - take over the world?"

"Nothing so melodramatic," Artemis chuckled. "Just gold."

"Ha! You're just a thief," Holly snarked at her captor.

A sliver of rage crossed over Artemis' youthful features but was quickly replaced with his preternatural impassiveness. "Hardly just a common thief, like our street urchin over there. No, I will be the first thief to separate fairies from their gold."

"Typical Irishman. You actually believe in the blarney about how leprechauns stash their gold at the end of the rainbow?" Holly spat incredulously.

"Not anymore, Captain Short," he retorted, chuckling at Holly's shock at being addressed by her name and rank. "After all, you did tell me about the LEP hostage fund, and here you are, a convenient hostage."

'I can't have told him all of this - for sure, he shouldn't be able to read my Gnommish name tag. It's not like I could have taught him that while I was unconscious,' Holly thought. 'Where is he getting this information from?'

Having had enough fun with his captive, Artemis stood up and looked Holly directly in the eyes. "As long as you are a guest in my house Captain, I request that you refrain from harming myself or my associates. I also forbid you from trying to escape." Raising his hands to forestall further conversation, Artemis gave his vampire smile and said, "Your rules, not mine."

'Round 1 goes to me,' Artemis thought as he walked back to his study.

* * *

After a few hours of perusing the grimoire in order to ascertain Diagon Alley's location, Artemis decided to temporarily suspend his magical studies. At any rate, he couldn't experiment with any of the spells or rituals detailed in the books surrounding him; without a wand, he could not ascertain the means by which magic was performed, and he didn't want to take any more blood or perform other experiments on his meal-ticket for the fear of harming him. 'How do I break into Gringotts though when I can't even find a way to deflect spells, much less replicate them, and don't even know where this infernal alley is?' he mused to himself.

Just as he was about to close the book though, he caught sight of a familiar name. Scrambling back into his chair, he read the passage:

 _On October 31, 1980, the reign of the Dark Lord Voldemort_ \- What was it with these people's ridiculous names? Flight-of-death - seriously? Someone certainly had a deep sense of insecurity - _came to an abrupt end. He inexplicably attacked Godric's Hollow and murdered James and Lily Potter with the Killing Curse. When he attempted to use the same curse on young Harry James Potter though, the spell failed, and he ended up being destroyed. Exact details are unknown, but as the young child was the first to survive the Killing Curse and had vanquished the worst Dark Lord in centuries, Harry Potter became venerated within the Magical Community as The-Boy-Who-Lived._

'Well, well - it seems that our guest will be far more useful than even I had anticipated,' Artemis thought. 'It's a good thing that I took the time to use my facial matching program to find the boy - _Harry, what a dreadfully boring name_ \- in the British government's records.'

For a genius of Artemis' caliber, hacking into those records had been a child's play - the fools hadn't even bothered to encrypt the data, for Frond's sake. Learning Gnommish had been significantly harder, but his child-like wonder and adult-like tenacity had seen him through, as they always had.

As Artemis walked out of the alcove, he wondered, 'Just how much would the British Ministry of Magic be willing to pay for their precious Boy-Who-Lived?"

* * *

When Ireland won its independence from Britain, Magical Britain lost a hefty sum of gold. Unlike their British counterparts, pureblood Irish magicals stored their gold in secret vaults within their own houses since they had suffered severe financial losses at the hands of both the goblins and the British magicals in the 16th and 17th-centuries.

Muggle Ireland fell in the Battle of Ulster in 1603, but Magical Ireland did not fall till 1750, when the British Magicals finally settled their differences with the goblins via the Treaty of Gringotts and wholeheartedly turned their armies towards subjugating their Irish enemies. Basking in victory after nearly two hundred years of continuous fighting, British purebloods confiscated the Irish purebloods' wealth, titles, and property, effectively relegating them to serf-like status. But the Irish magicals were crafty - they simply disappeared into the muggle world and became seafarers, merchants, and politicians, slowly restoring their fortunes. Unlike their British counterparts, the Irish also had another advantage - contact with the dwarves. Dwarven smugglers (such as the reprobate Mulch Diggums, who we will meet later in this tale) converted the Irish magicals' Muggle earnings into solid wizarding gold at bargain conversion rates. Whereas Gringotts' goblins set the conversion rate to "1 Galleon = 5 British pounds," the dwarves were able to achieve an equivalent between the two currencies. It helped that they had ready access to gold in the mines of South America, especially after the fall of the Spanish Empire.

So, upon gaining independence from Britain, Irish Magicals, who had campaigned so long and hard to regain their prestige, dedicated their now-considerable resources towards maintaining an extensive standing army and intelligence network. It was rumored that the IRA owed many of its greatest successes in Northern Ireland to this network. Even Voldemort refused to set foot in Ireland at the height of his power as he did not have the numbers or the wealth to take on such a formidable foe. Simultaneously fearing and hating their Irish counterparts, British magicals had fallen into the habit of simply ignoring them.

Given the tense relationship between the two communities, it did not take much for matters to come to a head.

A week after Harry Potter's disappearance, the Irish Minister of Magic and the Daily Prophet both received a letter. The Minister's letter warned him of an upcoming British invasion, which would be launched under the pretext of recovering Harry Potter from Irish kidnappers. It advised him to coordinate his defensive efforts with his Muggle counterparts, something that the British purebloods would never think of doing. By the virtue of their wealth and consistent lobbying, the Fowls had huge clout in the Irish Muggle government; also, Irish magicals still remembered the tale of Orion Fowl, who had established several prodigious libraries and protected the Irish countryside through his mercenaries after the fall of Camelot. So, it was no surprise that Artemis Fowl II was appointed the Strategic Defensive Coordinator between muggle and magical Ireland, receiving the full set of wards and security features that were commensurate with his high-ranking position.

Meanwhile, the Daily Prophet's letter boldly stated that Harry Potter was in Irish hands and demanded a million Galleons in exchange for his release. The British magical community erupted into an uproar, and the Wizengamot drafted articles of war; Dumbledore and the Light had to exert their full influence in order to prevent the Wizengamot from ratifying the articles and declaring war outright. They argued that this was the work of a few Irish hooligans, not the Irish government itself.

The cauldron had truly been stirred, and war was on the horizon.

* * *

Four days into Harry and Holly's kidnapping, LEP Commander Julius Root and his chief technician Foaly were examining Holly's helmet feed in order to determine her status. They were puzzled by the sudden appearance of the black-haired boy in the bushes and alarmed by the dart caught on the edges of the feed. Holly was incapacitated, or worse, dead.

"Any ideas on how we can track her down?" Root grunted.

Foaly shook his head. "The kidnappers must have disabled the trackers in her suit and weapons. I am not able to establish a connection with any of them."

"D'Arvit!" swore Root. "Anything on the Internet or the Mudmen's news stations?"

Foaly snorted. Gesturing fondly at his computers, he boasted, "My babies are scanning them continuously, so we'd know as soon as the kidnapper types, 'Fairy.'"

"And there's nothing else you can do? Gods, Foaly, why are we even paying you so much?" Root said irritably.

Foaly opened his mouth to give a standard, smart-alecky answer when the sensors on the other side of the room suddenly started pinging. He rushed to them excitedly and raised his eyebrows.

"Apparently, the sensor in the Captain's Neutrino has reactivated. It's showing her to be at..."

"The wharves on the outskirts of Dublin," Root realized. "Well, what are we waiting for, Foaly? Gear me up, and prepare a shuttle for topside."

"But sir, are you sure that you want to handle this by yourself?" Foaly protested. Root shook his head and laughed, "Foaly, I've been handling critical missions since before you were born. That's one of my men...er, woman...out there, and I am going to bring her back home from the gates of Hell if I have to."

But Foaly still hesitated. He still smelled something fishy about the whole situation. Yes, the location seemed to match up with Holly's last known location - the ancient grove of oak trees. Yes, Holly's kidnappers could have disabled the sensors for the last few days, and Holly could have somehow managed to reactivate them now. But Foaly knew his friend - if she had managed to reactivate the sensors, then by this point she would have managed to knock her out captors and somehow get a message below-ground. Hamburg aside, no one could accuse Holly of a lack of creativity or tenacity.

Before he could voice his concerns though, Root had already walked out of the room - after 80 years, the Commander was finally being reactivated.

* * *

Two hours before the People received GPS signals from Holly's Neutrino, a black Bentley rolled up to the wharves in the outskirts of Dublin. For all his criminal proclivities, Artemis Fowl detested whalers. He disliked the whales' pointless deaths and the massive amounts of pollution caused by these ventures. Moreover, Artemis preferred ventures that allowed him to exercise his considerable mental prowess and maximized profit. The Fowl cola venture and whaling were both resource-intensive and idiotically simple.

Steepling his fingers, Artemis glanced down at the handgun in his laptop. Fairy technology was truly marvelous; the gun was powered by a compact nuclear power source, which was easily a century ahead of human technology. He had struggled to unravel the case containing the GPS tracker as the screws seemed to have been somehow chased around each other until they had settled into a specific pattern. He had already reverse-engineered Holly's helmet cam and had added several features to it that should prove useful when the fairies attacked the manor.

'Now, time to send a message,' Artemis thought.

"Butler, please create a distraction. I won't be long."

Butler nodded stoically. 'Each to his own.'

The whalers unloaded the last of the blubber from the ship and were preparing to go home after long, hard day. They paused though as a huge shadow fell over them.

"Good evening, gentlemen. Lovely evening, isn't it?" Butler asked casually.

The dockworkers glanced at each other and simply nodded. Not only were they tired beyond belief, but the...man...was so big that they decided to err on the side of caution.

"I suppose that a group of illiterate buffoons like you can't be bothered to hold a casual conversation with a gentleman," Butler continued. "Or wash yourselves and follow basic hygienic practices for that matter."

"Arrrgh," ground out one of the dockworkers.

"How eloquent. I don't suppose that your mothers taught you anything useful?"

All of the dockworkers suddenly stopped and glared angrily at Butler. They could ignore insults about themselves, but now this guy was bringing their mothers into the conversation...

"Now, ladies, before we start picking fights, remember that we can't rush off to tattle to mommy afterwards."

"That's it," a dockworker cried out. "Just remember that you asked for it when you're bleeding to death, you arse." He lashed out at Butler with a fist.

There were only two martial artists who knew more forms than Butler, and he had trained one of them. The other spent his days on a remote island in the South Pacific beating up palm trees. You had to feel sorry for these guys.

Butler saw the punch heading for him in slow-motion. He side-stepped the oncoming fist and jabbed his fingers into the assailant's solar plexus. The dockworker fell to the ground gasping in pain, and Butler grabbed him by the collar and swung him into a group of his oncoming comrades.

He then leaped like a ballerina straight onto the group, and his weight effectively knocked them out. 'Brutal but effective. Artemis did want a distraction after all, even if I would have preferred to snipe these cretins.'

The remaining dockworkers saw that Butler was down and sought to take advantage of the opportunity by rushing him. Butler rolled away from the mass of unconscious bodies, leapt to his feet, and lashed out with a spinning kick. The kick's ferocity effectively landed the head of the group in the hospital for a month.

Without pausing, Butler continued to rain out a series of blows to the remaining assailants' bodies. He discombobulated the man to his right and jabbed the man to his left in his thigh. As both men went down on their knees, he smashed their heads together. Spying the last two assailants sneaking up behind his back, he back-flipped. In the middle of the flip, he grabbed hold of their shoulders and pulled them along with him. As he landed back on the ground, the two assailants flew into the sky and landed in the water.

'20 dockworkers down in 5 minutes. I managed to stay in the shadows, so they can't ID my face. Judging by their breath, they were drunk to the gills at any rate.'

A mocking clap rang through the air.

Butler turned and saw Artemis waiting by the Bentley.

"I have managed to finish my business, old friend. Although, I must ask - a spinning kick? And what about that backflip? Your sensei must be rolling in her grave."

Butler winced. Perhaps he had interpreted his mandate a bit too liberally.

As they drove away, Butler's curiosity won out, and he asked, "What was all that about anyway, Artemis?"

Artemis stared out the window as he formulated a response. "Sending an invitation."

* * *

Root stepped out of the shuttle, shuddering. "Never again," he swore. He missed the good old days, when he only had to rely on his magic and instincts to guide the shuttles through the magma vents. Sure, he had his share of close calls, but he had full control. With the new generation of shuttles, almost everything was automated, and while pony-boy trusted his gizmos with his life, Root didn't.

At the press of a button, the DoubleDex wings noiselessly retracted outwards. Root eyed them appreciatively. The Koboi DoubleDex wings were a vision of beauty - with its translucent and paper-thin blades, one would have to be extremely discerning in order to spot the wings behind this fairy. They also consumed far less power than any of Foaly's wing designs, which he pointed out delightedly to the centaur at every available opportunity. 'Ironic that the fairy that he beat out in college on the basis of wing design is now the leading wing-maker,' he mused to himself. 'Foaly always did have an inflated ego though.'

Then again, Foaly was the reason that the People had managed to stay ahead of the Mudmen. Not to mention the fact that he was virtually irreplaceable - if anyone else were to try to access his system, it would automatically self-destruct.

Shaking his head to head off his musings, Root flew onward to the location of the tracker.

"Foaly, I have successfully reached the docks. I don't see anyone at the moment. Am I correct in assuming that you've disabled the cameras?"

"Way ahead of you, boss-man," the centaur said smugly. "You could be using one of those ostentatious Gen-I Koboi wings and dancing the conga, but I'm looping the cameras, so they won't register anything."

"I don't know, Foaly - weren't those "ostentatious" Gen-I wings much quieter and smaller than the ones in your lab?" Root inquired a tad too innocently. He wasn't disappointed.

Foaly whinnied and ground out, "If only I could get more funding for my wing designs. Mark my words, we're going to regret putting all our eggs in the Koboi Industries basket someday. I remember Koboi from my college days - she was the most unstable person that I've met, and I can see her trying to take over the world."

"Sounds like someone's jealous," needled Root. He couldn't resist trying to deflate the centaur's ego. Heavens knows that it was large enough as it was.

"Sounds like someone's forgetting about the fact that an officer is down, and this is a high-priority mission," Foaly retorted heatedly.

Root sobered at that. "You're right, Foaly. My mistake. Pull up a map in my visor, and show me my position versus the GPS tracker's."

He saw a simple 2-D map come up on his visor screen and saw a blinking red dot straight ahead of him. Root crouched and cautiously moved towards the red dot.

He walked into a warehouse and down a set of stairs before ending up in front of a nondescript door.

"If this were one of those human horror movies, an axe-wielding maniac would throw open the door and leap towards you right now, sir," Foaly joked.

Root wanted to reprimand Foaly for his levity, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. Truth be told, he was feeling a bit nervous now. Holly certainly wouldn't have holed up voluntarily inside this warehouse, especially given the whale blubber on the floor above them. The People's magic would have reacted negatively to the whale meat, and Holly would rendered powerless or dead.

Hands shaking, Root grasped the doorknob and pulled. What greeted his eyes chilled his eyes.

A timer counted down steadily - _3:00, 2:59, 2:58,..._ Root could see wires connecting the timer to the Neutrino's nuclear power source. He was pretty sure that the Neutrino wasn't supposed to be smoking.

"Ah, we meet at last," a chilling voice spoke.

Root's gun was out in a flash. He took a step back and looked wildly around the room. "Who and where are you? What have you done with my officer?"

"Oh, _your_ officer. I do believe that we have an item of mutual interest."

"I don't do business with scum like you, Mudboy," snarled Root. "You're just like the rest of your kind - loud-mouthed, brash, full of hot air."

The voice chuckled, sending a shiver down Root's spine. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to antagonize the psychopathic Mudboy.

"I am not like any Man that you've ever seen, little fairy," the voice proclaimed.

"Now fly, little fairy. And tell the others of your kind of Artemis Fowl the Second offers his salutations."

The timer suddenly jumped from 1:59 to 1:00.

"D'Arvit!" Root turned and stumbled up the stairs as fast as he could.

He unfurled his wings and thrust himself upwards at full speed, crashing through warehouse's glass ceiling and careening into the cool night sky.

"BOOM!" The warehouse exploded into flames, which were magnified by the blubber inside the warehouse and thereby rapidly spread onto the whaling ships nearby.

Root was lucky - he could feel the searing heat wave of the explosion pass over him, but he had managed to get far enough away to avoid the flames.

"Commander Root! Julius! What is your status? Answer me!" a panicked voice brayed in his ear.

Root gritted his teeth and ripped out the earpiece. He spoke into it with barely controlled rage, "My status is extremely annoyed and happy to be alive, Foaly. Now, quit whining into my ear, and gather the Council. The Mudmen have attacked, and I barely escaped with my life. We need to plan out our next steps.'

For once, Foaly did not respond with witty repartee. Instead, he stared at his screens in silence. War was on the horizon.

* * *

 **Thank you for taking interest in this fic and for staying with me so far!  
** **This is my first fanfiction, so I would greatly appreciate your reviews/feedback. Please read and respond!**

 **Note that the fairy portion of this chapter is identical to the series of events in the Artemis Fowl novel because I wanted to provide an introduction to Root, Foaly, and the fairy side of things since I've been setting up the wizarding side for the last few chapters. In short, Artemis is planning to rob both the People and the Wizards, so this is a two-pronged assault.**

 **My goal is to get Dumbledore and Root to eventually team up against Artemis. Given that Artemis holds their acquaintances hostage and that both have to work against their respective governments in order to avoid all-out war, there is potential for a meeting of their minds. I've already provided a big hint in this chapter of how the two will end up meeting.**


	7. Chapter 7: The Intermediary

**Notes:**

 **Many thanks for the reviews and favorites/follows! I am really excited to see the positive response that this story has been getting so far, especially since this is the first fanfiction that I have written.**

 **Yes, this is a manipulative Dumbledore story. He's not a bad guy per-se, but he is far too focused on the big-picture ("The Greater Good" if you will). And yes, I know that Dumbledore himself never stated that he was acting for The Greater Good in canon, but it's how I interpreted his actions. After all, he pretty much left Harry with abusive relatives partly to ensure that his head didn't get swollen with fame. He also (to quote Snape) raised Harry like a pig for slaughter since he suspected for a good while that Harry was a Horcrux but didn't investigate other options for eliminating the Horcrux. I think the fanfic author Wanda Ginny Greenleaf really put it best when she wrote that Dumbledore can't be both a benevolent, wise old headmaster and a consummate manipulator/strategist.**

 **But Dumbledore's manipulative nature doesn't necessarily mean that he can't form a lasting alliance with Root. To his credit, he does possess a relatively inclusive view of the world, seeing wizards as the equals of Muggles, goblins, house-elves, and other species. So, it's not much of a stretch for him to extend that view to the People, especially if he got a glimpse of their superior technology. And as far as Root is concerned, if Dumbledore can get his officer back and can offer assistance on managing surface issues, then more power to him.**

 **At the moment, nothing is final though. I have several ideas, but things are still up in the air. Case in point - I was originally planning to get back to Holly and Harry in this chapter, but I decided to set the stage for the Dumbledore-Root meeting instead.**

 **Enjoy!**

Chapter 7 - The Intermediary

After two weeks with the irrepressible Mulch Diggums, the goblins in his cell block had become intimately familiar with the equation, "Two thumbs + dwarven saliva = a fire redirection ward."

Dwarves and goblins had been bitter enemies since they had first encountered each other during Merlin's Age; their forges had directly competed with each other to mass-produce armor and weaponry for Arthur's knights and to create specialized enchanted gear for Merlin's wizards. When the elves pitched their proposal for creating Excalibur, the dwarves and goblins nearly came to blows over the issue of whether earth (the demesne of the dwarves) or fire (the demesne of the goblins) should dominate the sword's enchantments. Fortunately, Merlin and the elves' might combined were more than enough to keep the two groups in check; plus, as much as both groups detested each other, they loved profits far more, and there were riches to be had at the height of Camelot.

Then, Camelot fell, and the common marketplace between all of the races collapsed utterly. As profits began declining sharply, dwarves and goblins once again began sharpening their knives and preparing for war. Fortunately, the Great Schism, which was so harmful in many other ways, averted the brewing conflict; as the dwarven and goblin camps became split within themselves over the question of staying with the wizards on the surface or retreating underground, they decided to ignore each other for the moment.

Remarkably, the dwarves were the only race to remain wholly united even after the Great Schism; they reached a compromise, wherein they established themselves as smugglers and go-betweens between the various magical races, above and below ground.

Meanwhile, the goblins were unable to reach such a consensus, so like many other fairy races, one camp stayed on the surface and warred with the wizards while the other retreated underground. Over time, the former lost its autonomy and was subjugated by the wizards but maintained most of its magical abilities; meanwhile, the latter was unable to adjust to its peers' emphasis on science and technology and the limited amount of property available underground. So, the underground goblins devolved into a series of civil wars, which severely culled their numbers; the survivors were often the youngest and least skilled in magic, which meant that they were less likely to have fought in the first place. Consequently, even as the survivors managed to breed like bunnies and bring the goblin numbers back up, the underground goblins as a whole lost a good deal of magical knowledge and education, which eventually constricted them to casting only basic fire-spells.

It was the latter group that Mulch Diggums had cowed into submission in his cell block. Like the rest of his brethren, Mulch had extensive contact with smuggling groups in both the wizarding and fairy worlds, so he had access to base dwarven earth magics AND technology that was easily decades ahead of those utilized by humans. The latter especially ensured that he could easily give human authorities (magical or otherwise) a slip. And even if the former had been weakened by his violation of the stipulations of the People's Ritual magic (a.k.a, don't break into people's houses without getting their permission beforehand), it was still enough for him to wriggle out of the stickiest situations.

So, one might rightfully wonder how this uniquely endowed character could have been snapped up by the LEP? The answer lies in Mulch's grandiose nature. Where the rest of his kind stuck to the shadows and drew little attention their activities, Mulch loved the attention and the theatrics. He couldn't resist claiming credit for his work, and this got him arrested several times, even though he had long ago escaped the crime scene. 'Of course, the Tower of London remains my finest job to date,' Mulch recalled fondly. 'Totally worth the prison time.'

He could still remember it like yesterday...

 _'Revenge on a sleazebag - check. I mean, you can't get sleazier than Willy Bank. Favor to an old friend, Danny Ocean - check. Huge payoff - double check, Mr. $10-million.'_

 _At first, Mulch had simply been trying to relax and enjoy the spoils of his most recent venture in Las Vegas by playing a tourist in London. He also knew that he would raise the LEP's suspicions (curse that centaur!) if he pulled off a heist so soon after his last one. This wise sense of caution flew out of the window as soon as he saw the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London._

 _'So many diamonds' - Mulch practically salivated over the jewels in the crown. His eyes were especially drawn to the Koh-i-Noor diamond - '105-carats, that has got to be the biggest diamond that I have ever seen. Say hello to my ticket to a private island in the Bahamas.' If Mulch had bothered to learn about the history of the diamond, he would undoubtedly have been amused to know that a theft had brought it to its current place in the Crown Jewels. Then again, if Mulch had expressed an iota of interest in history, his thefts would have run through a wider gamut of items, which in turn would have made it that much harder for the LEP to pin him down. After all, it doesn't take a genius like Foaly to connect the dots between a small individual who comes into town and the subsequent thefts of bullion and jewelry._

 _'No, I can't steal it at this moment. Keep your nose clean, Mulch. Just wait a few more weeks,' he muttered to himself. At the same time, the jewels seemed to speak to him - to beckon him to touch them, to free them from their confinement behind the glass case and armed guards around the case._

 _'Too high-profile and too visible. It's daytime, I'm in the middle of a pack of tourists, and the case is on top of a solid base of metal, which I can't burrow through. And given the abundance of cameras in the area, Foaly would be onto me before I could sneeze.'_

 _Sobering himself quickly, Mulch turned away from the jewels and was about to move on when he bumped into someone who was only slightly taller than him._

 _'Watch it,' Mulch began when his advanced sense of smell noticed something - this kid was a wizard._

 _Now, to digress slightly, dwarves can actually smell and taste magic. This was due to the fact that ancient dwarves had created the foundations for many wizarding buildings, which often incorporated defensive runes and wards. Since dwarves literally ate their way through the earth during this process, wizards developed rune-inscribed teeth guards to diffuse defensive magic into the newly created spaces. An unintended consequence of these teeth guards was the fact that the runes became permanently impressed on the dwarves' teeth. These runes ended up conferring the heritable ability to taste and smell magic upon the dwarves._

 _So, Mulch's interest was instantly piqued by the young boy in front of him. For the most part, wizards stuck to their own little world and rarely indulged in the mundane side. 'How lucky am I to meet a wizard just when I wanted to rob those jewels? After all, regardless of their myopic attitudes towards the rest of the world, they do have a useful set of skills.'_

 _Mulch's senses furthered informed him that this kid didn't need a wand for most of his magic - 'Definitely a keeper. This way, the pesky Aurors can't track us down.'_

 _So, Mulch cleared his throat and smiled to reassure the boy that he had just collided with. In hindsight, his tombstone-sized teeth probably had the opposite effect._

 _"My apologies, boy. Say, why don't I make it up to you by getting you lunch?"_

 _Before he could protest, Mulch swept the black-haired boy away from the jewels and hurried down the stairs._

 _"Ok, listen up kid. You look like a street urchin, and I can tell that you have a wicked set of skills. Here's the deal - if we can nab those jewels upstairs, we can get upwards of 40 billion pounds. That's enough for you and your grandchildren."_

 _"Wait, what are you talking about? What do you mean by 'a wicked set of skills'?" the boy asked warily. After all, he had just received a proposal to steal a heavily guarded national treasure in broad daylight. You could forgive him for being a bit skeptical._

 _Mulch rolled his eyes in annoyance. 'Oh god, it's one of those types - the ones who can do magic but have no clue what it is that they're doing. I have to baby him, don't I? Ok, Mulch, cool down and stay focused. We're talking about shiny national treasure here - the crown jewel of my personal collection.'_

 _"You're a wizard, kid," Mulch said slowly, as though he were talking to a baby. "I am one too," he lied through his teeth. "It's why I could tell. Now, if you could help me steal those jewels, I can introduce you to the rest of our community."_

 _Harry stared at him in suspicion. "You're a wizard?" he said skeptically._

 _Mulch rolled his eyes and decided to give him a demonstration. ["You, dog"] he barked at a nearby dog. ["Fetch me your owner's purse, and I'll give you a big bone."] The dog instantly complied, bringing back a single black purse with its tail wagging in anticipation._

 _Harry looked between Mulch and the dog with shining eyes. "Cool! Could you teach me how to do that? I thought that I was a freak - the only one with these special abilities. But there are more people like me?" he erupted excitedly._

 _"That and more - I'll keep you safe, and I'll show you to the rest of yo-our kind if you can just help me with this matter," Mulch promised. He felt a twinge of guilt at exploiting this kid's innocence and obvious loneliness, but then he remembered those jewels and thought of the headlines - "Theft of the century! National Treasure Stolen!"._

 _Harry bobbed his head in agreement, as though he was afraid that Mulch was just going to up and disappear if he looked away. He held out his palm, and Mulch grasped it bemusedly. Mulch cursed under his breath as blue cords of magic suddenly leaped between them and sealed their oath._

 _"There - that way, you HAVE to introduce me to the others," the boy said satisfiedly._

 _'Shrewd kid - he already knows a bit about how the world works,' Mulch noted. "Well, I can't keep calling you 'boy' or 'kid.' What's your name?"_

 _"James," he replied confidently. Mulch introduced himself in turn._

 _"Ok, James. Show me your stuff, and help me get up there unnoticed," Mulch said impatiently._

 _James grabbed hold of Mulch's shoulders and scrunched his eyes. He seemed to be almost...willing...them both into invisibility as their bodies slowly became transparent and then purely reflective. 'I haven't seen magic like this before. Where's James' wand?'_

 _When they were both fully invisible, Mulch headed back up the stairs to the floor with the Crown Jewels, with Harry in tow. Mulch's breath caught as the cameras swiveled toward him and Harry, but when none of the guards reacted, and no alarms were raised, he sighed in relief._

 _"Ok, James. Do you have any tricks up your sleeve for distracting the guards and tourists?" Mulch hissed._

 _James simply concentrated on a single point on the floor, and four snakes suddenly appeared at the spot. Breathing heavily out of exhaustion, James hissed something to the snakes, and the snakes promptly slithered away. As Mulch looked on in fascination, the room erupted into panic as several tourists were bitten, and the guards rushed away from the case ('so unprofessional,' Mulch snickered to himself) to restore order within the rampaging crowd._

 _Mulch slipped past the guards and approached the case; he noted that the cameras were firmly focused on the scene of chaos, not the case, so he was free for the home stretch. Mulch applied a coat of highly corrosive dwarven saliva onto his hardened thumbs and drew a circle with them onto the glass. The glass sizzled and cracked, and he caught the circle as it broke off. He detached each jewel reverently from the crown, pocketed them, and replaced the glass circle before making a hasty exit._

 _Of course, Murphy had to make an entrance at that point. James had exhausted himself earlier with his conjuration of the snakes (which, at his age, was extremely impressive, especially if one considered that he did it wandlessly), so his invisibility spell slipped, and the two suddenly appeared on camera, right in the middle of a pack of tourists and Tower guards. 'Well at least, they can't see the jewels on my person.'_

 _The momentary silence that had fallen due to this reveal was shattered as a man screamed, "Thieves," and the guards rushed towards them. James grabbed hold of Mulch's hand, and Mulch suddenly felt as though he was being squeezed through a tube. 'The bloody kid knows apparition,' he thought admiringly. 'Not that it's going to help his magical exhaustion though.'_

 _They landed with a stumble at the Tower's entrance and broke off into a sprint. 'We might make it,' Mulch thought optimistically when he heard a dozen cracks behind him._

 _'Great, I had to jinx myself. Kriffing Aurors,' he cursed._

 _Mulch grabbed hold of James' hand and dragged him through the crowd as the Aurors shot spells after them. A blue spell actually hit James, and he slumped unconscious. Cursing - 'I will not be caught by Aurors. I'm a laughingstock among other dwarves as it is for being caught by the LEP.' - Mulch unleashed his most potent weapon - dwarven gas. He pushed Harry into an alley and ejected the colorless but highly fetid gas directly into the crowd of Aurors._

 _In a minute, the entire company was unconscious. Mundanes refused to use the street for weeks since the awful smell stubbornly persisted. Wizards had no idea what had happened but quickly sent in officials with Bubblehead charms (not that they were particularly effective) to retrieve their downed fellows. LEP officials tried to contain the disaster by quickly mind-wiping all humans in the area (including the wizards, before they were retrieved)._

 _Mulch left James in front of a soup kitchen; Foaly was definitely onto him now, and the LEP would probably track him down in a matter of hours, so he needed to move on quickly. Strange though it was, he didn't want James to be mind-wiped; James had been a valuable partner, and with training, the two of them would be unstoppable. But for them to get to that stage, he had to keep James off the LEP's radar._

 _Mulch was caught the next morning, just as he was boarding a train to Paris._

Which was why Mulch was currently in prison. This stretch had been longer than any of his previous ones, but then again, his venture was far more...dramatic...this time. 'Ah, if only they had waited for the news to hit the human papers. My epic robbery - foiled before the world could ever find out,' Mulch sighed. 'At least I got a potential protege out of the experience.'

He was still a bit sore about his arresting officer though - an elfin captain who had tagged him with cham-foil and a grappling hook, attached the cable to her wings, and flown him off to custody. 'She had to fly me off - showoff,' Mulch grumbled disgruntedly. Dwarves hated heights.

* * *

"Prisoner 1117, Commander Root is here to see you, per your request," the guard announced.

"Beetroot" (as Julius was nicknamed for his short temper) slowly walked up to the cell and glared down at the convict.

"Julius - looking as red and angry as ever," Mulch mocked. He loved to bait the Commander.

Root easily rose to the bait. "Listen convict, we're in the middle of a big situation upstairs, so either tell me what you want to say, or I can transfer you to Howler's Peak."

Mulch paled at that - he had managed to subdue the small number of goblins in the general prison population easily enough. But Howler's Peak - maximum-security goblin prison? Where the goblin generals were housed? He wouldn't last a week.

"All right, all right, Julius. Keep your shirt on," Mulch babbled. He hesitated before going on - it was almost as though something was _compelling_ him to talk to Root about this. "Julius, did you happen to check the video footage from the Tower of London heist?"

Root's face became redder, if that was even possible, and he was about to blow his top when Mulch interrupted hurriedly, "Did you see the boy with me on the security footage?"

"We only got a few seconds of footage from the incident. The two of you somehow disappeared right under our noses after that," Root admitted reluctantly.

"Thank you, thank you. I admit, we were a dynamic duo, and I was ever truly the talented maestro. But.." At this, Root noticed that Mulch seemed to be fighting himself. He didn't want to reveal this information, but something was forcing him to. 'The thrice-damned vow,' Mulch realized.

"The boy who was with me? He was the one responsible for the snakes, the invisibility, and teleportation," Mulch finally blurted out.

At 'teleportation,' Root froze. "Wait, this boy - was he black-haired and green-eyed? If I gave you an image, you can ID him, right?" Root demanded.

Mulch nodded, much against his own will. "I can also put you in touch with others like him," he ground out.

Root leaned forward in his chair in anticipation. Finally - a break in the case that didn't involve putting him in harm's way. "I need to know everything you can tell me about that boy and his abilities. The situation that I just mentioned to you is a hostage crisis - apparently, a certain Artemis Fowl" - at this Mulch's face blanched - "has kidnapped both this boy and my top officer. Any information you have could be useful."

Now, Mulch may have been a criminal and a drama-queen, but he did have a heart. He had heard of the Fowls and their legendary ruthlessness, and upon hearing that James had been kidnapped by them, he knew that the benefits of concealing information about James' abilities or the wizards no longer outweighed the costs. 'Not to mention that the vow literally won't let me keep my cards close to my chest on this matter.'

* * *

A few hours later, Root walked into Foaly's office with Mulch in tow. His pounding migraine was only exacerbated by the shouting match between his friend Briar Cudgeon and Foaly.

"As your superior officer, I command you to send this information to the Council," Cudgeon screamed at Foaly. Before he could go further, Root interrupted, "We're not sending any of this to the Council yet. It's hot stuff, and we need to verify that the convict hasn't just lied through his teeth. Not to mention that the Council's solution-"

"Is logical - bio-bomb the manor and wash our hands clean of the matter," Cudgeon responded pedantically.

Root glared at his erstwhile friend. "You're suggesting a bio-bomb already? When Recon's only female officer is stuck in there and we haven't bothered to figure out what the kidnapper wants? And with a young, innocent child in tow?"

"And if the convict's information is true -"

Mulch interrupted, "I do have a name, you know."

"Quiet, convict, " Root said without heat. Mulch had been most useful in the last few hours. He continued, "then we could be dealing with an unknown civilization here, and we can't risk angering them. We need more information before we can report to the council or take any definitive action."

Root looked at Foaly and commanded, "Get me any information you can find on the Fowls. Specifically, Artemis Fowl II. I am going to meet up with the convict's wizarding contacts and see what else we can uncover."

Turning to Cudgeon, Root stated grudgingly, "I know that you're just trying to cover our asses. But please just give me a chance on this."

Cudgeon simply shook his head and walked out of the room.

Taking a deep breath, Root looked Mulch directly in the eyes and queried, "This Mundungus Fletcher? We're meeting him in Scotland, correct?..."


	8. Chapter 8: Incremental Progress

Chapter 8 - Incremental Progress

Harry Potter did not do things half way. Case in point - when Harry fell unconscious or asleep, he either did not dream at all or suffered through horrifying nightmares; he'd never really had any pleasant or happy dreams.

In Harry's nightmares, he often broke into houses in the middle of the night and slaughtered all inhabitants within minutes with a single downwards stroke of the arm and a flash of green light. Except Harry was absolutely certain that it was NOT _him._ Practically speaking, this was because Harry did not recollect ever meeting any of these individuals, and the calendars that he saw in the victims' houses indicated that some of the murders occurred before he was even born.

But on a more intuitive level - Harry was highly attuned to magical flows (or how magic and intent interact to achieve the desired effect), so he could feel the other-ness of the magic in the dreams. Initially, when Harry had first started to use magic, he had compared his magical flow with the one in the dreams, and he had immediately seen the difference. The magic in the dreams had a different signature itself - while his flow mainly consisted of desire and desperation, the magic in the dreams was driven by hatred. Pure, unadulterated hatred. Even Harry's hatred for the Dursleys couldn't compare as this flow just wanted to harm, to kill, to destroy everything in its path and leave the world in flames.

So, for the sake of his own sanity, Harry began to refer to the subject of his nightmares as "Tom," a name that he had heard one of the victims call out as a malediction before he had died. As psychopathic as Tom was, he did know a lot about arcane magical fields though - knowledge that Harry was able to leverage in his own life. For example, after the Dursleys gave him a particularly severe beating and left him with a broken arm and leg in his cupboard, Harry used Tom's knowledge of anatomy and healing to magically mend his bones.

In the current situation, after Harry fell unconscious while trying to resist Artemis' blood-magic-based commands, he opened his eyes to a series of tomes about Camelot and Merlin's Golden Age. Tom seemed particularly fixated on the sections pertaining the fall of Camelot and a certain Orion Fowl. As he read about how Orion had collected many valuable tomes on forbidden magics, he felt a mounting sense of glee and anticipation. 'Have I finally found a source for soul magics?' Tom thought to himself gleefully. 'Well, only one way to find out...'

At this point, the dream blurred and faded away into a kaleidoscope of colors; when it settled, Tom gently landed on the grounds of a very familiar manor, and a series of alarms began blaring loudly. Casting Freezing Charms on the alarms, Tom conjured ropes around the giant Muggle who tried to rush him. 'As much as I would love to wipe out this stain, I can't leave any evidence. It wouldn't do to attract the Irish government's notice at this stage.' So, Tom simply Obliviated the Muggle before moving inside the manor.

Tom cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself and purposefully walked through the somber hallways, using his wand as a compass. After looping through the house several times, Tom seemed to realize that his compass charm wasn't working, so he improvised. Much like Harry, he put away his wand and started trying to _sense_ magical flows within the house. He felt a mass of intent in one of the walls near the entrance, right behind the portrait of a stern-looking Fowl. 'Honestly, do the Muggles really think that they can hide the treasure trove of knowledge behind a mere painting? Even if they did get a wizard to add magical protections, why not get him to at least make them more subtle? Some challenge this was.'

Unfortunately, Tom's string of good luck came to an end at this point. No matter what he tried, Tom was unable to penetrate the magical barrier behind the painting. He was able to sense that there was an extra precondition related to the Fowl family itself but could not divine any more specifics on the precondition itself. Cursing softly as he heard a car pull up on the driveway, Tom turned abruptly on his heel, vanished the ropes around the Obliviated Muggle bodyguard, and flew off into the night like a wraith. 'Just you wait, Muggles - there will come a day when I will slaughter you all where you stand, without having to worry about the wrath of any government.'

Had Tom possessed a modicum of patience and even an iota of respect for Muggles, he would probably have realized that he had an opportunity to penetrate the barrier as the Fowls were entering the house. After all, the precondition was simply that a Fowl with the knowledge of magic must be the one to access the alcove. After it had been accessed once, the barrier would fall, and the alcove would be open to all.

* * *

Harry woke from his dream with a gasp. Compared to the usual "Tom" nightmares, this one was actually pretty tame.

"Oh, you're awake," Holly observed. "Our _host" -_ Holly spat the word - "Artemis Fowl dropped by earlier while you were resting from doing his work for him."

Harry started at the mention of Artemis' last name. 'Well, I guess that this dream is going to be pretty useful; I thought that the manor looked familiar. In fact, I stumbled past that painting when Holly and I were trying to escape.'

Shaking his head to head off stray thoughts, Harry began apologizing to Holly, "Sorry about turning against you and bringing you back down here. Whatever Artemis did" - at this, Harry's green eyes glowed in frustration and anger - "forced me to comply with the commands. If I didn't, I felt severe pain near my heart."

Holly turned to Harry, startled by his apology. She felt a bit ashamed at the fact that she had blamed the Mudboy - Harry - for something out of his control. After all, he had tried to save her when he could have absconded quickly, before Artemis had the chance to recover and use that blood magic voodoo.

"No, don't apologize - it's not your fault. Thank you for trying to save me, Harry. But why didn't you just leave me behind? That's what most of your kind would have done," Holly wondered.

Harry stared at Holly steadily. "I am not most of my kind. You saw what I did, what I could do. I'm like you - we're not exactly normal, and we have our own special set of gifts. So, we need to stick together." He hesitated before continuing, "And I don't want anyone to be imprisoned or otherwise manipulated for their gifts. I've been through that, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone else."

Having said his piece, Harry blushed heavily but was reassured as Holly smiled at him. "You really are one of a kind, aren't you Mudboy? In more ways than one?" Harry smiled back at her at that.

"Um, if you don't mind my asking, why did you just call me Mudboy? And what exactly are you?" Harry inquired politely.

Holly looked at him, thoughts racing. On one hand, she contended with a lifetime of training stating that she should not reveal any information about the People to humans. On the other hand, that training had well and truly been rendered obsolete in the current situation, especially since she had already spilled the information to her captor. Compared to Artemis, Harry was actually deserving of the information.

Making up her mind, Holly responded, "I'm an elf. Specifically, I'm a police officer in the Lower Elements Police Force or the LEP for short. Millennia ago, the People, which a term which collectively refers to elves, centaurs, and other groups of fairies, moved underground after a war with the Mudmen (that's you humans). We can perform limited set of magic but need to perform a Ritual periodically to replenish our magical reserves. That's what I was doing when you showed up and we got kidnapped."

She continued, "We call you humans Mudmen because one of our kings, Frond, thought that he could assuage your lot's greed, which he viewed as your biggest character defect, by handing out gifts at least once a year. It's the basis for your tradition of Christmas."

"Errr, that sounds like a bad idea. For a guy who was bent on promoting human-fairy cooperation, he didn't really seem to understand human nature, did he?"

Holly scowled. "No, he didn't. It's a part of the reason that I'm stuck here with you at the moment - because he wanted to allay humans' concerns about our magic, he had the demon warlocks fashion a series of constraints on our magic so that we wouldn't be able to go on the warpath against them. To his credit, the constraints did help mitigate bloodshed after his death as we just retreated underground instead of trying to drive encroaching Mudmen off our land. But at the same time - binding ourselves for Mudmen? What have they ever done for us?"

Holly stopped - in her indignation, she had forgotten that she was speaking to a Mudboy at the moment. It didn't help that the Mudboy had his own special set of abilities or that he was such a good listener.

To her surprise, Harry didn't get annoyed at her tirade; he simply laughed. "It's ok, I totally get where you're coming from even if I AM human myself. For all our supposed intelligence, our civilization" - he drew air-quotes around the word - "is actually pretty myopic. We have a certain set of social codes and expected behaviors, and as long as people stick to that playbook, society will consider them "good citizens." Never mind that these "good citizens" might have their own fair share of dirty laundry, which is carefully concealed within their houses; if someone gets suspicious, all they have to do is flash their badge and just slander their way out of trouble."

Harry's lips curled upwards into a bitter smile. "The worst part is that the slandered victims won't even get a chance to plead their innocence - they can either find someone else to slander/scapegoat or have to take society's 'punishment' lying down. That's justice for you!"

Holly looked at the her fellow captive shrewdly. "Sounds like I'm not the only one with something against humans?"

Harry shook his head. "The difference between you and me is that I am not harboring a grudge against humanity against a whole - I just detest certain kinds of people. I can agree with your sentiment that humans are generally selfish pigs. But don't lump us all together under that label - that would be akin to me saying that all fairies hate humans from what you said before."

"Wait, I don't hate -"

"Not saying that you do. I'm just saying that given that we're going to be stuck together in this dungeon for god-knows-how-long, I hope that you will give me a chance to show you that not all of us wallow in the mud. In other words, don't be like those humans that I just described to you - the ones who only check to make sure that you fit within their neat little boxes and make snap judgments about you if you don't."

Holly nodded thoughtfully. "Fair enough."

Harry nodded in satisfaction. "So, what kind of magic can you do?" Harry inquired curiously.

"Healing, shielding (turning invisible), physical enhancements, the Gift of Tongues (speaking any language)" Holly admitted. "Nothing as flashy or powerful as your magic though. What can you do?" Holly shot back just as curiously.

Harry looked around a bit nervously before responding. "I can turn invisible. I can create small objects, like snakes, out of thin air. I can teleport. I can shoot fire from my hands." Recalling Tom from his dreams, "I think that with training, I could probably wipe memories and conjure more advanced objects. The only limit on what I can do seems to be my own energy levels and lack of knowledge."

Holly looked at Harry speculatively. "How does it work though? During the Ritual, I draw my magic from the earth into my body. Then, when I want to heal or shield, I just pull on the magic in my body."

"Sounds similar to what I can do, minus the ritual part," Harry replied thoughtfully. "Instead, I feel like I am pulling on the energy flowing through the air around us and then just wish really hard that for a result. The intent part seems to be the same for both of us though."

"Well, that's probably why you get tired so easily," Holly speculated. "Rather than drawing on all energy around you, why don't you cache some of it in your body and then draw on that cache for your magical requests?"

"Good idea." Harry closed his eyes eagerly and set out on this process. As usual, he could feel the energy flowing around him, and just the simple act of connecting to it washed away his worries and sorrows. He inhaled deeply, allowing the energy to rush into his body. Rather than directing it towards some task or other though (as he usually would have), Harry instead pushed it towards replenishing the half-empty magic pools near his heart. 'Those must be my magical reserves,' Harry realized.

Once the reserves had been completely filled up, Harry cut off his access to the influx of energy. Opening his eyes, he concentrated on the locks around his and Holly's hands, but instead of pulling from the outside, Harry extracted energy from his reserves this time. He immediately noticed that it was significantly easier to direct the energy to perform his bidding; whereas he previously had to focus on both limiting the amount of energy entering his body AND shaping that energy through his intent, he now only had to focus on the latter. 'Of course, I'll have to replenish the reserves from time to time. If I wait for them to naturally replenish, it might take a while,' Harry mused.

With a 'Click,' Holly and Harry's locks flew open, and their shackles fell to the ground with a 'Clang!'. Rubbing her fists, Holly looked at Harry with grim satisfaction. "Nice work, Harry. I'm guessing that you're not feeling as tired as usual?"

Harry nodded emphatically. "Yeah, your suggestion worked beautifully. Thank you so much for that!"

A look of concern passed over his face. "Holly, you should get out of here now, while you can. You're not -"

Holly interrupted, "Actually, I am. While he used blood magic against you, he used the Book's stipulations against me. During the days of Frond, the elfin king, the demon warlocks established the precondition that we need to obey humans' commands within their dwellings, if they were delivered while maintaining direct eye contact." She grimaced, "I can't believe that they couldn't see how that could go wrong."

Harry winced. "Well, we may be stuck here, but..." At this, Harry hesitated - should he tell Holly about his dreams? Or would she think he's crazy?

'Well, she's already seen magics that she thought were impossible only a short while ago,' Harry thought grimly. 'And who knows? Maybe she can help me with this problem too?'

"I have these weird dreams sometimes," Harry said haltingly. "They feel like memories from someone else's life. The important thing right now is that I just had a dream right now, while I was unconscious, and I saw that there was a hidden alcove of magical tomes in this house. Maybe we can check it out and find something to break the enchantments that Artemis is using against us."

Holly looked at Harry appraisingly. On one hand, she would be following a little boy around their captor's house based on the word of his dream. On the other, it beat sitting around in a cell. And given the magic that she'd just seen, she could buy divination.

"All right, Harry. Lead on," Holly decided. Harry looked at her, surprised, as though no one had just taken him at his word before (which no one had). The surprise flashed away and was replaced with gratitude as Harry disillusioned them both and walked to the painting.

Like Tom, Harry took a moment to sense the magical flows in the area and instantly noticed a major difference - the magical barrier behind the portrait was gone. 'The preconditions must have been met,' Harry supposed.

After a moment of hesitation, the two intrepid magical beings entered the Fowl Alcove. "Gods, Harry, you were right after all," Holly gasped. Punching his shoulder, Holly chuckled, "You're a pretty good friend to have, you know that?".

At the word "friend," Harry stopped. "You're not saying that just because I was useful, right?" Harry began worriedly. "Are we really friends?"

Holly looked at Harry carefully. Elves were highly empathetic, so she had already noticed that Harry had major insecurities about his abilities. At the same time, she had obviously underestimated how deeply they ran. 'Poor boy probably had no one that he could trust to look at him for himself rather than his powers,' she realized with a pang of pity.

"Yes, we really are friends," she reassured him. "And not just because you were 'useful.' You came back to rescue me even when you could've gotten out of this hole, right?" she smiled at him.

Harry smiled back at her, and for the first time that evening, he acted like the child that he was. He held out his hand to her and said shyly, "Friends?".

Holly took his hand without hesitation and responded, "Friends. Now let's search this place for a book that can help us give Mr. Fowl his just desserts."

* * *

Albus looked over the rims of his spectacles at the dwarf and the cloaked figure in front of him. Mundungus and the dwarf had swiftly fallen into drunken debauchery, having forgotten all about the original purpose of the meeting.

"Mr. Root, it is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, and I am the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I would like to apologize in advance for intruding in this meeting, but given my status as the Supreme Mugwump of the Wizengamot and your Irish nationality, I was hoping to have a conversation with you on the deteriorating relations between our two countries."

'Deteriorating relations?' Root thought. 'What is he talking about? And what is all this nonsense about Hogwarts and the Wizengamot?'

Root was understandably feeling a bit overwhelmed. From the moment that he had walked into the Leaky Cauldron, his initial impression of human magicals had been shattered. He had expected a ragtag group of human criminals who had the added advantage of being able to access a unique brand of magic. He had not expected to see vampires, hags, and medieval wizards and witches frequenting a bar that was invisible to the mundane world. He had definitely not expected the outlandishly-dressed wizard in front of him to be a major figure in this world, which suddenly had its own schools and government and was currently engaged in a Cold War with its Irish counterpart.

As far as he could see, there were two options going forward - one, he could try to bluff his way through. That option fell apart as soon as he made eye contact with Dumbledore's blue eyes; suddenly, he felt as though his mind was being X-Rayed, and someone was going through his memories like a storybook. Root cursed under his breath as he saw the blue eyes widen in shock.

'Option 2 then - lay out the cards on the table,' Root thought grimly.

"So, I suppose that it's considered proper and normal for beings to scan each other's thoughts in conversations here, hm?" Root ground out.

Albus hastily muttered apologies, but Root waved them off. "Save it. If it weren't for the fact that you could help me get my officer back, I would show you my full displeasure. DO NOT READ MY MIND AGAIN, MUD-MAN!" Root thundered.

At this, all conversations in the bar stopped, and everyone looked at their motley crew.

"Nice going, Julius," Mulch muttered. "Drinks for everyone! On the house," Mundungus slurred out with a roguish wink. At this, conversations resumed.

"Albus, you're going to have pick up the tab," Mundungus noted. "Don't I always?" Dumbledore sighed.

Root clenched his fists and exhaled deeply. "All right, Albus. You have me at a disadvantage right now, so enlighten me as to who you are and what this world is. And in the interest of time, you will be very interested in continuing this conversation after seeing" - Root tossed the photos of Harry and Holly being shot onto the table - "this."

Upon seeing the photo of Harry, Dumbledore's face whitened, and he furtively swept the photos off the table and into his robes. He took a deep breath and began, "Have you heard of Merlin, by any chance?"

"Who hasn't?" Root grunted. "He wasn't real though, right?" he guffawed. "I mean, wizards and witches..."

"Might I remind you that you are currently sitting among the very wizards and witches that you claim don't exist," Dumbledore stated pleasantly. To quell further doubts, Dumbledore drew his wand and transfigured the salt shakers on the table into a troupe of dancing mice.

Root stared flabbergasted. "All right, I believe you. Since you obviously know the boy in the picture, and he's obviously a wizard from what we saw in Holly's camera feed, can you help us get him and my officer back? If so, do you know what kind of magical defenses we might run up against since the attacker seems to be knowledgeable about both of our worlds?"

"Well, what can you tell me about the identity of the attacker?" Dumbledore inquired curiously. "As for the boy, he's," Dumbledore hesitated, "someone of importance in our world. You're right in saying that we would like him back dearly."

"As for the rising tensions that I mentioned earlier," Dumbledore continued, "after the boy was kidnapped, we received a notice in our papers from the kidnappers stating that they were of Irish origin and demanding a large ransom. Magical Britain and Ireland have been at each other's throats for centuries," - "you Mudmen and your stupid wars," Root grumbled - "and the fragile peace that we maintained for the last decades has now deteriorated into a Cold War after the boy's kidnapping."

Root groaned. "Great! It's a good thing I decided to consult with you before rushing in. The last thing we need on top of the first fairy hostage situation is to stumble on a war between two secret, magical societies. Well, can you help me or not?"

"I will need to know the identity of the kidnapper," Dumbledore said with twinkling eyes. As soon as he knew who the kidnapper was, it would be a simple matter to portkey to his location with the Order and resolve the issue.

"Artemis Fowl the Second," Root spat. "Bugger nearly killed me when he delivered his message. Couldn't he have just published it in our newspapers like he did in yours?"

Dumbledore's face paled, and he seemed every inch the old man that he was. "Ah. This complicates matters unbelievably. Unless you are amenable to introducing yourselves to our Ministry and the Irish Ministry, to lend veracity to claims about Artemis Fowl being the chief perpetrator?" Dumbledore asked hopefully.

Root laughed. "I'm way out of bounds just in meeting with you. I'd have to hand in my badge before I could say D'Arvit if the Council found out that I was even meeting with a Mudman. And if word got out about magical society, who knows how the Council would react? The paranoid bastards might decide that you're too much of a threat. No, if we want to cooperate and resolve this issue together, we're alone."

"So, what would you suggest doing?" Dumbledore asked wearily.

Root mulled the question. "Test the waters, of course. You mentioned that you and Mundungus were a part of some Order? How competent are they? Could you put me in touch with them?"

"I could," Dumbledore agreed readily.

"Good. I would like to create a strike team comprising of my top officers and your top Order members. While we hold a meeting with Mr. Fowl to figure out what he wants from all this, the strike team can break into the manor and free the hostages. My officers can provide cover while your Order members can perform the actual rescue operation."

At Dumbledore's questioning glance, Root elaborated, "Our magic comes with certain restraints - for example, we can't break into human households, sort of like how mundane policemen can't legally perform a search and seizure without a warrant except at the next level. So, we can defend your Order and keep watch outside while they actually go inside."

Dumbledore nodded. "An ingenious plan, if I say so myself."

The two made eye contact and shook hands. They reveled momentarily in the feeling of entering a historic partnership, but this moment was ruined as the two scoundrels to their left retched directly onto them.


	9. Chapter 9: First Impressions

Chapter 9: First Impressions

 _"What is magic? How can we perform magic? These two questions have puzzled magicians for millennia and will not likely be solved for many more - but nonetheless, I shall venture a guess. Magic is nothing more than energy at the most fundamental energy, and we wizards can perform magic because we have a sixth-sense of sorts that allows us to sense and direct the energy in the world around us. To elaborate, this is what happens when we perform magic, in my humble opinion:_

 _1\. If our magical cores are empty or non-existent, we will activate the sixth-sense, so to speak, which allows us to sense the flow of energy in the world around us. Then, we will pull on this energy and fill up our cores as necessary._

 _** If our cores are already full, then we can skip this step. So, our cores are essentially a cache._

 _2\. We think about WHAT we want to accomplish and HOW BADLY we want to achieve that goal. Oftentimes, my students focus on the former to the exclusion of the latter; they realize their mistake when, in a fit of frustration, they finally accomplish the given task. This step is ABSOLUTELY VITAL since it is responsible for creating a strong channel between our mind and our magical core/the ambient energies._

 _3\. We think about HOW we want to accomplish the task. At this point, energy is flowing smoothly between the "mind-body" connection, so it is a matter of visualizing how this energy is to be directed outwards._

 _4\. Let the energy flow outwards._

 _Of these steps, the first is the most dangerous; it is akin to trying to wade into a rushing river in the middle of a storm and capture a fish without getting swept away. This is why wands are so useful for novice magic-users. Essentially, the magical cores within wands act as substitutes for our own; we merely have to perform steps 2 and 3 from above while the wand handles step 1 and 4. For simple tasks, wands allow neophytes to completely bypass their magical cores; for more complex tasks, they supplement the magician's efforts._

 _While the wand certainly makes it easier to learn magic and offers an unprecedented amount of convenience, I must stress that it fundamentally limits the scale of magic that one can perform, thereby separating your average magic-user from a phenomenal one. I would compare this to a knight sending his squire out to do battle - he himself exerts less effort and even gives his squire an opportunity to gain experience, but he also loses touch with his skills and has less control over the outcome of the battle. That is why I teach my students, as my mentor Merlin once taught me, to use the wand first to get an initial impression of magic, then get a sense of ambient energies, and finally how to safely extract those energies by emulating their wands' magical cores. Once they have accomplished the last, we celebrate by having them burn their wand to ashes - symbolizing the fact that they are ultimately responsible for their own magic, not their wands._

 _Unfortunately, Salazar and Helga disagree with my practice in this matter. Salazar vociferously protests my ideas on principle; he never could get over my Muggle-born heritage. Helga, on the other hand, is justifiably wary; her younger brother died when he was nine since his body burned out after he opened himself fully to ambient energies. I have tried telling her that this is why we are using wands to start off with now, unlike the old days, but her fear leads her to insist that we continue using wands for the duration of our training and lives. A pity - if she could get past her fear, she would see that her magic with plants is far more beautiful without a wand than with one."_

Harry finished reading aloud the excerpt from Rowena Ravenclaw's journal to Holly.

"Told that you were a magical prodigy!" Holly said triumphantly. Seeing Harry's skepticism, she continued, "From what I read in the grimoire, every wizard today uses a wand, and what you just read aloud shows us why. After Rowena's death, wizards must have gradually become over-dependent on their wands and forgot about how they originally performed magic. At any rate, the consensus in today's magical society is that the only wandless magic that is possible is 'accidental magic.'"

"Is that why the wizards never detected my magic, then?" Harry asked curiously?

Holly nodded. "Yeah - the Ministry apparently only has mechanisms to detect wand-based magics since they don't think it's possible to consciously perform wandless magic - so no sense in tracking that."

"Seems a bit short-sighted."

"Yeah, your people's society seems to have seriously stagnated over the last few centuries, mainly because the Salazar that Rowena mentioned started this mania about the 'purity of magical blood.' Apparently, researchers have turned all their attention towards proving the superiority of having more magical bloodlines since the 'purebloods' are the ones in power and therefore control the purse-strings."

Harry became quiet at that. "Are they right though?" he asked worriedly. "I mean, I don't think that my parents are wizards. My previous guardians told me that they died in a car crash, and I'm pretty sure that magicals don't drive cars."

Holly punched his shoulder fondly. "The way I see it, you've already bypassed the wand-training-stage that supposedly took years to get past, according to Rowena, and that the rest of your society is still stuck in. And you freed us both from the dungeons. Far as I'm concerned, you're a prodigy and a fine wizard. All you need is more knowledge about what's possible at this point."

She continued, "And if you ask me, blood doesn't matter one bit. You saw what Rowena wrote - the ability to use magic ultimately depends on how well you train yourself to sense and direct the energy around you. So, practice and dedication really, much like for any other skill/talent. In fact, now that I think about it, it's how the People do magic too at the most fundamental level, and we never cared about blood at all. Although, come to think of it, the Ritual might be a crutch on our part, just like wands are your society's handicap..."

Harry seemed to cheer up at that. "Thanks! I'm really glad that you're here with me to make sense of all this. I mean, I always used to do really weird stuff when I was young, and I didn't know it was magic then. If I'd known, then maybe I could have controlled the outbursts and could have avoided being locked in the cup-"

Harry cut himself off at that, looking scared. He had said too much.

"Are you saying that you were locked in the cupboard," Holly began incredulously, "because you performed accidental magic?"

Harry looked at the floor in shame and nodded. "Great," he thought bitterly. "I just made a friend, and I ruin it by running my mouth." He unconsciously turned away from Holly and stiffened, preparing for rejection.

Holly grasped Harry by his shoulders, turning him back towards her, and said firmly, "You have nothing to be ashamed of, Harry. I still stand by what I said earlier - I am truly fortunate to have met a magical prodigy and friend like you."

"Really?!" Harry looked back up at Holly with hope in his eyes. For the first time in his life, an adult was actually listening to his story and wasn't looking at him like dirt or blaming him for all sorts of problems.

"Really. It's those monsters who did this to you who should be ashamed," Holly said firmly. She prompted him gently, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Harry hesitated again but began haltingly. He told Holly about how everyone in Privet Drive thought he was a criminal and delinquent due to his Aunt's gossip; how he accidentally turned a teacher's wig blue once because she wouldn't believe that he hadn't cheated on the math test; how Vernon had beaten him black-and-blue with his belt after that; how he ended up on the school roof after a particularly vicious round of Harry-Hunting; how he didn't receive any meals for three days afterwards; how the cupboard under the stairs was his bedroom and the spiders in the cupboard his only company before he ran away.

It all came pouring out. How he was the family cook, gardener, and maid; how Vernon got drunk and loved to take out his frustrations on Harry with his belt; how he would only get even angrier when Harry miraculously recovered from his injuries within a few hours; how Petunia hit him on the head with the frying pan if Dudley complained about the cooking or wanted more food; how he initially got just enough to survive but then eventually stopped receiving any food at all from the Dursleys.

By the end of it all, Holly's arms were wrapped around a crying Harry. Harry was simultaneously mortified and relieved - the former because he had completely broken down and told his life story to a stranger and the latter because it felt so good, so liberating just to cut loose and talk to a friend about the misery that he had gone through. By habit, he wanted to pull back since the streets had taught him that showing any weakness could be fatal. At the same time, he finally had a friend and felt loads lighter after having talked.

So, Harry continued and told Holly about Achilles. How Achilles had found him and adopted him into a gang after his first few months on the streets. The first few months had been the toughest of all - Harry was used to begging and scrounging for food, but he wasn't used to the biting cold or persistent rains. At least with the Dursleys, he had a cupboard that sheltered him from the elements. When Achilles adopted him, Harry was relieved that he could finally sleep inside building again rather than a ratty, exposed cardboard box near the dumpsters.

But then Achilles had found out about his magic and turned out to be just like everyone else. Harry had thought that he had finally gotten an older brother - but instead, Achilles pushed him to use his magic and punished him if he failed. "For some reason, I wasn't able to duplicate the food or the water," Harry said sniffing. "So, whenever I failed, he would shame me in front of the rest of the kids. 'I took you in when you were at your lowest, when you were struggling to survive. And this is how you repay me, you s**t!' he'd yell. It got worse when I refused to use my magic to hurt the other gangs' members - I mean, they were kids like us too. 'You traitor! If I say, make an example of him, I mean BURN him! We are a family, and no one else matters. Capiche?' he'd scream. By the end, he was no better than Vernon; the only difference was that he and the others used their fists rather than a belt."

Holly was at a loss. Elves were naturally empathetic, so she felt the boy's pain acutely. 'Poor kid. He had no one to hug him or even hold him and tell him that everything would be all right. No one to be proud of him for not becoming a vicious street thug and sticking by his principles.'

Harry gulped and finally confessed the biggest thing on his mind. "I felt so bad for failing Achilles until the Troy Flats Incident though. A rival gang moved into an abandoned series of apartments nearby, and Achilles wanted to drive them off "our territory." So, he told me to set the flats on fire in the night, to make an example to all other gangs. I was horrified - I didn't want to kill the people in there. I mean, they were kids like us at the end of the day, just with a different label. So, I warned them before the night of the attack, and they mostly managed to evacuate. But Achilles somehow found out what I had done before I could run away. He and his cronies got hold of tire irons and started beating me to bloody pulp with them. I..."

At this, Harry drew in a shuddering gasp.

"I couldn't control what happened next. I put my hands above my head to protect it from some of the blows - I thought that I was going to die there and panicked. Next thing I know, there was fire coming from my hands. Achilles got the brunt of it - last I saw him, his shirt was on fire, and he was running around, screaming. The guy that I had thought of as my elder brother before I showed him my magic."

He fell silent for a few minutes after that. Then, lips curling upwards, he said bitterly, "After that, I decided that it's safer if I was alone. That way, no one could hurt me, and I would hurt no one. This magic has been a curse more than anything."

Harry looked back at Holly through his tears. "Until I met you - the one good thing about this entire hostage situation is that you showed me that my magic is USEFUL, that it can actually do good things for others, that it can actually be COOL. You're the first person that I've met who hasn't hated me or tried to exploit me due to my magic. Instead, you just want me to explore it because you think that I have a talent for it and could be great. You're not looking at me like a freak or an asset - just as a kid or a friend."

"So, thank you, Holly."

Holly's heart ached for Harry. "You are a little kid though - that's how everyone should have seen you and treated you. You didn't deserve this kind of treatment," she muttered angrily. 'Magic is simply another part of you, just like your hands or feet - why can't Mudmen just see that?'

Later, as Harry fell asleep over a tome over a tome on illusion magic, Holly didn't have the heart to wake him up.

'Poor tyke; let him get a good night's sleep for once. We still have a few hours before Juliet comes down to serve breakfast, and his illusions should fool Fowl's cameras for now.'

She turned back to the book on blood wards and continued reading while stroking Harry's hair.

* * *

The clock had stopped ticking.

Artemis glanced at the camera feed from his mother's room. Ever since his father, Artemis Fowl Sr., had disappeared in the ill-fated Fowl Star expedition somewhere around Murmansk, Russia, Artemis' mother, Angeline Fowl, had steadily fallen into depression and dementia. At Angeline's behest, Fowl Sr. had been attempting to move the Fowl Empire's businesses into more legitimate areas; as the Fowl Star expedition was meant to be the beginning of the process, Fowl Sr. had diverted a majority of the Fowl Empire's finances towards the project. Unfortunately for him, the Russian Mafia did not like a foreigner muscling in on its territory and retaliated accordingly.

It had been two years since Fowl Sr.'s disappearance, and he had long since been declared dead. However, Artemis refused to accept this as the truth; he vowed to find his father and bring him home at all costs.

The first step was to stabilize the floundering Empire. The boy genius stepped up to the helm of the empire within a month of his father's disappearance and had quickly stopped the hemorrhaging of funds through a series of untraceable heists. As Angeline's mental deterioration accelerated, he and Butler beat back social services by restoring the Fowl Empire's formerly close ties to the Irish government, which had deteriorated in the days of Artemis' grandfather. Now, nearly two years later, the Fowl Empire, while still a shadow of its former self, was at the very least financially stable, and there was a strong leader at its helm.

But in order to mount an expedition to recover his father, Artemis needed more than "financially stable." He needed access to large amounts of funds within a short period of time.

The answer lay in the tales of fairy sightings and legends of fairy gold on Internet forums.

In this matter, Artemis' youth worked to his supreme advantage - had he been slightly older, he would have dismissed such tales as flights of fancy or the ravings of lunatics. As it was, Artemis was highly skeptical of these stories. But he believed that every legend had some basis in truth, so he persisted in this line of research until one of his contacts put him in touch with a mystical healer in Ho Chi Minh City - his first meeting with a real, live fairy. He blackmailed that fairy into giving him a copy of the Book, which had subsequently sparked this entire venture.

Upon seeing that Angeline's room was empty, Artemis smiled and muttered, "All is going according to plan."

Butler rumbled into the room. "Artemis, I thought that I saw something on the monitors. It might have just been a flicker -"

"If it was just a flicker," Artemis interrupted, "then you would not be here, old friend. Trust your instincts. Have you tried using the new camera yet?"

Artemis had combined the camera filters from Holly's helmet with those of a top-spec digital camera intended for nature photography. The camera now sat on the weather vane of Fowl Manor, positioned carefully so as to allow a 360-degree view of the surrounding area.

Butler turned to the screen with this special camera's feed and tapped his way through a series of menus. He focused on the portion of the feed facing the west wall.

"Wait - freeze that frame!" Artemis commanded. Butler nearly questioned him, but having spent years observing Artemis at work, he fulfilled Artemis' request.

Butler gasped in surprise as a dozen figures suddenly sprang onto the screen. Artemis nodded in satisfaction.

"The fairies are shielded. Essentially, this means that they are vibrating at extremely high frequencies, so they would appear invisible to the human eye," Artemis lectured. "Not so for our enhanced camera."

Butler repeated the process on the area near the south wall; he was graced with the image of several of wand-waving, robed figures, who had broomsticks by their sides. Artemis mused to himself, 'Well it appears to be a good thing that I managed to leverage the Irish Magicals' paranoia into an advanced series of wards. Otherwise, we would have been overrun by these wizards by now.'

"Their invisibility poses an obstacle but not an insurmountable one," Artemis stated crisply. "We are fortunate that the wizards and fairies essentially utilize the same method for achieving invisibility; the difference appears to be in the power source. Whereas the fairies are exclusively relying on their bodies alone, the wizards appear to be focusing their bodies' energy through their wands, which should theoretically relieve the strain of maintaining invisibility."

At Butler's questioning glance, Artemis smiled, "I noticed them nearly 15 minutes ago. Since then, I have been feeding the camera feed into an electromagnetic-wave-viewer in order to study the differences. It has been most illuminating."

Noticing Butler's mounting irritation ('Magical investigations are all well and good. But when Rome's on fire, you don't play the fiddle. Unless you're Nero.'), Artemis hurriedly took the modified helmet that he'd been working on and attached it to Butler's head. The small helmet looked like a toy hat on Butler's large head.

At that moment, Artemis' laptop beeped, and the pair saw two figures waiting at the entrance to the manor - one short, red-faced fairy and one outlandishly dressed wizard.

"Ah, it appears that we have guests - rude ones to boot, given their uninvited companions. Butler, please deal with the party-crashers, will you? I will attend to the invited."

Butler nodded and lumbered off. Artemis steepled his fingers and bared his teeth into a wolf-like smile. 'We shall meet at last, Commander Root and Headmaster Dumbledore.'

* * *

Divide-and-conquer was the name of the game. While Albus and Root conversed with Artemis, the fairy team would distract his security guard, Butler. This would leave the way into the manor clear for the wizard team that was currently breaking down the Irish government's wards on the manor.

Unfortunately, there were two faulty assumptions behind the plan:

1\. The fairies assumed that they could easily hold off Butler.

2\. The Order assumed that the manor's wards were the major stumbling block. Even if Butler somehow bypassed the fairies, the wizards reasoned that with their magic, they could easily defeat him.

As both groups eventually realized to their detriment, it never pays to underestimate Butler.

* * *

Butler strolled out of the manor leisurely with a rocket launcher in one hand, a tranquilizer gun in the other, a strange set of goggles over his eyes, and a pair of noise-cancelling earphones over his ears.

The fairies, who had been steadily advancing towards the manor's entrance, stopped at this sight. They had expected sidearms and guns. But the rocket launcher? What was the Mudman doing?

Butler answered their question by hoisting the rocket launcher onto his shoulder, aiming carefully at the south wall, and squeezing the trigger. A loud "BOOM" ricocheted through the courtyard, and the LEP officers closest to Butler fell to the ground, covering their ears in pain. On the other hand, Butler remained unfazed, both due to extensive experience with such weapons and the noise-cancelling earphones that he was wearing.

Before any of the LEP officers could recover, Butler lashed out with a spinning kick at the LEP officers near him. The disoriented officers flew into their comrades, or worse, into the manor's walls.

The LEP officers who had escaped unscathed gaped at Butler with slackened jaws. Butler thought dispassionately that it must have been a shock to see an enemy easily advantage one of their age-old advantages.

"Gentlemen, we don't have all day," Butler barked stridently.

At this, the remaining officers roused themselves and raised their firearms. 'Too slow,' Butler thought as he leapt into the crowd of officers, jabbing out with a fist here and a kick there. Given Butler's mighty strength and reach, no officer was safe; each victim felt as though the sky had fallen in on him and fell unconscious almost immediately.

Four officers jumped into the bushes and tried to fire their Neutrinos at Butler from the cover. Butler merely grabbed a few of the fairies around him and used them as body shields, venturing closer and closer towards the bushes like an implacable mountain. Once he was close enough, he swung the stunned fairies towards the pair behind him and dealt out a forceful kick at the one in front of him. The force of the kick was such that this fairy went barreling into his partner in the opposite-side's bushes.

'The LEP's premiere team - 25 fairies - down in less than 3 minutes. Not bad.'

* * *

Meanwhile, to avoid being blown to kingdom come by the rocket, the wizards had frantically diverted all of their energies from the ward-breaking runes to a protective shield. In the process, several were drained completely of their energies and knocked unconscious; unfortunately, Bill Weasley, the Order's warding expert, was among this number. Rallying behind the veteran Alastor Mad-Eye Moody, the remaining wizards fired a continuous burst of spells at the weakened wards.

But they stood no chance; their hexes and jinxes could have worn down the wards in another fifteen minutes, but Butler had gotten there well before then. They might have had a shadow of a chance if they hadn't been exhausted by the protective shield or the burst of spells that they had been maintaining for the last five minutes. As it was, exhausted and out of options, they were sitting ducks.

Butler landed on them like a cheetah does on a pack of gazelles. Identifying Mad-Eye as the veteran and the leader, Butler quickly pounded his head between his fists, discombobulating the old man. He then put him down with a rapid jab to a pressure point on his neck.

With the leader down, Butler could now afford to play with his prey. He duly spent the next few minutes bobbing and weaving through the mass of spell-fire being shot at him, letting the attackers take each other out. The five remaining attackers eventually learned their lesson and congregated together to avoid friendly fire.

'Big mistake,' Butler thought grimly. Butler used his foot to dislodge a fallen Order member's body from the ground and throw it into the sky. When the attackers' spells hit the body, they froze in shock for an instant. An instant that was more than enough time for Butler to spin around the flying body and to bound across the distance. At close quarters, the remaining attackers didn't stand a chance.

Knocking two heads together and therefore ruling two Order members out of the game, Butler turned his attention to the last two. He assessed them efficiently - the tall black one was well-built and generally stuck to a position while the other was smaller and flitted about. The tall one would attempt to hold him physically at this point while the light one would take advantage of the distraction by retreating into the distance and firing a finishing series of spells. That wouldn't do.

So, Butler did the one thing that they didn't expect - he fell. As he fell to the ground, he grabbed a fistful of dirt and threw it directly into the smaller Order member's eyes. She coughed and rubbed her eyes to clear off the dirt. The taller wizard, who had been expecting Butler to charge, froze in surprise, and Butler took advantage of the distraction to sweep out his feet under him and bring him down as well. Before the taller wizard could recover, Butler brought an uppercut crashing down on his solar plexus and jabbed his fingers into his neck. 'One down, one to go.'

Pushing himself off the ground gracefully, Butler saw a scorch mark hit the spot that he had just been laying in. He raised his eyebrow at the last Order member and gestured around him. Involuntarily, the witch took his eyes of him for a moment to survey the sea of downed wizards. A moment too long.

As the witch's world faded into unconsciousness, she heard Butler's voice saying, "Next time I see your kind on this property, I will be using bullets, not just my fists."

* * *

While Butler was...er, playing...with the wizard and fairy extraction teams, Artemis was having a very productive conversation with Root and Dumbledore.

Artemis took a deep breath as he went up to the front door. 'Remember - you are a gracious, polite, albeit evil host," he counseled himself.

He opened the door and greeted the odd couple before him, every bit a gracious, polite, but utterly evil host. "Good evening, gentlemen. Welcome to my abode."

Dumbledore looked down his spectacles at the youth in front of him. Had he parted his hair to the side rather than slicking it back and been a bit less pale, the youth would have been a miniature Tom Riddle; there were other differences to be sure, but the two individuals did have a strong resemblance. 'As evinced by Harry's abduction, he certainly has Tom's cunning,' Dumbledore thought to himself with trepidation. 'Thank Merlin he doesn't have magic.'

Root on the other hand was marveling at the youth of Holly's abductor. 'Seems like Mudmen are making criminals younger and younger these days. Although from what I can remember with the exploding tanker, that doesn't mean that they're any less devious.'

Dumbledore cleared his throat and began benignly, "Good evening to you, my boy. I am -"

Artemis interrupted, "My name is Artemis. Artemis Fowl the Second. Please do not refer to me as 'my boy' or with any other sobriquets. I am well-aware that as a leading figure in Magical Britain's politics and academia, you are used to having people kow-tow to you. But please remember that the shoe is on the other foot so to speak. I currently hold your precious boy-who-lived."

Dumbledore paused. Artemis reveled in the flash of fear and anger that crossed his face before his features smoothed out; the open geniality from before was gone though. 'Message received.'

Artemis turned to the glowering Commander Root. "Commander, I invite you inside these premises so long as you do not attack me or otherwise attempt to harm me. And Mr. Dumbledore, I invite you inside on the same conditions but require an Unbreakable Vow to that effect. That vow shall also preclude you from using magic on the premises for the duration of the meeting."

With trace bit of hesitation, both parties grudgingly agreed to Artemis' terms and entered the house. Artemis led them to the dining table and gathered his notes.

"Gentlemen, where shall we begin?" Artemis smiled pleasantly at his two guests.

Root took a cigar from the ashtray on the dining table and lit it. He drew a long breath and blurted out, "What assurance do I have that Holly is safe?"

Artemis cocked his eyebrow and turned on the TV screen behind him. The live feed of the dungeons popped up, and the two saw Holly and Harry in chains.

"You barbarian," Root swore, spittle flying out of his mouth. "I -"

"Now, now, Commander. I would watch that temper. After all, you did promise not to hurt me, and your officer's well-being depends on your...cooperation," Artemis smirked.

Root bit on the cigar, almost grinding it to dust. As he gripped the table and visibly tried to calm himself down, Dumbledore interjected solemnly, "Mr. Fowl, I beseech you to release Harry at the very least. He is a national hero and has undergone many tribulations as it is."

"All the more reason that I should keep him hostage, hm? Neither of you are asking the right question by the way," Artemis stated conversationally.

"What do you want, Mudboy?" Root spat out.

Artemis' eyes lit up, and his vampire smile reappeared in its full glory. "Gold - 1 metric ton from the People in exchange for Holly and 20 million Galleons from the British Magical community in exchange for Harry Potter."

"20 million Galleons!" Dumbledore said aghast. "You only asked for 1 million in the Prophet. Please be sensible, my boy."

Artemis' aristocratic features hardened. "As I requested earlier, please cease referring to me as your 'boy.' I am not one of your pet students. And I can charge however much I want for Harry Potter. I am merely compensating for costs incurred in the maintenance of a national treasure, as you yourself referred to him. For your inability to refer to me with respect, I have decided that the ransom price is now 30 million Galleons."

Dumbledore's blue eyes blazed with fury, and he stood up from his chair. The shadows in the room heightened, and the flames in the fireplace surged. The surrounding air took on a distinctly chilly cast. Both Root and Artemis stared at Dumbledore apprehensively - for the first time, they saw that he was no ordinary man and comprehended why so many people followed him.

"Artemis, you will release Harry Potter to me and cease with this nonsense," Dumbledore boomed.

Artemis recovered quickly. Clearing his throat, he responded condescendingly, "Hardly. I admit, you do have a distinct flair for drama, but please do remember the Unbreakable Vow that you swore before entering this house. You cannot use magic on or against me during this visit."

At this, Dumbledore withered and returned to his normal, aged self. He sat back down, looking at Artemis furiously. "Rest assured, my boy, your fun and games will soon come to an end. You cannot just play with the lives of people like this," he vowed.

Artemis ignored him. "Well, Mr. Root? Are you willing to meet my demand? Or will you bluster like Mr. Dumbledore here?"

Root responded gruffly, "You know what's going to happen, Mudboy, after we give you the gold?"

Artemis nodded serenely. "Yes, you will perform a time-stop on the Manor and detonate a bio-bomb in the area to clear out all organic matter - namely, us. Afterwards, you can come in and recover the gold at your leisure - theoretically of course."

"Then, what's the point of all this if you know that you're going to lose eventually anyways?"

Artemis looked Root directly in his eyes. "I know how to beat the time stop. Rest assured, once you give me the gold, it is mine forever."

"Even if you could beat the time-stop, you cannot beat the black wards. And rest assured, my boy, I will spend the entire Dumbledore family fortune hiring the best goblin warders. You will not get away with this, so you might as well give it up, my boy," Dumbledore said with twinkling eyes.

Artemis didn't miss a beat; he retorted coolly, "I will beat your famed black wards and time stop. You cannot stop me."

Root discreetly checked his watch. Ten minutes were already up, and judging from the live feed of the dungeons, they hadn't seen a hide or a hair of the wizard extraction team yet. 'What's taking them so long?' he wondered.

Artemis pretended not to notice Root checking his watch and instead continued, "By the way, Mr. Root, aren't you wondering why Mr. Dumbledore referred to the boy as the 'Boy-Who-Lived' and the 'national treasure?' I somehow doubt that he told you about the boy's true significance to his culture."

For a second, Root looked at Dumbledore with an expression of distrust and wariness. 'Our plan was to stall him together. But what if Fowl found out about the strike teams from Dumbledore since Harry seems to be so important to him?'

Dumbledore gazed back at Root steadily and made eye contact. Strangely enough, Root felt a wave of calm and trust flow through him. He raised his chin and shot back at Artemis, "All we know is that you're the kidnapper, and we will work together against you to bring the hostages back home safe and sound."

"But Commander, don't you know that Dumbledore is a mind-reader. In fact, I imagine that he used his Legilimency capabilities to send over a wave of calm to you. Didn't you suspect that sudden bout of calmness and trust," Artemis taunted.

He continued, "At the end of the day, Commander, it's each man for himself, especially since I am holding the Boy-Who-Lived. Isn't that right, Dumbledore?"

Dumbledore responded, "My apologies, Commander. I merely wanted to reassure you that I am your ally. And Artemis, cease with these childish games, so that we may begin negotiating."

"We will NOT be negotiating, Dumbledore. I have stated my demands, and you both will meet them if you don't want me to broadcast a video demonstrating the hostages and their abilities to the entire world."

Shaken by Artemis' mind games and his utter confidence, Root glanced at his watch again; it had now been twenty minutes, and Holly and Harry remained in the dungeon. Artemis smiled at the gesture. "Ah, you are probably wondering what happened to your strike teams. I believe that Butler dealt with them nearly twenty minutes ago," he mused casually, enjoying the pair's rapidly paling faces.

"And I believe that the Irish Ministry would be most interested to see its suspicions confirmed - after all, a group of British citizens just attacked an Irish citizen's house on the pretext of holding peace talks with the Strategic Defensive Coordinator, hm? And what if they find a group of creatures from an entirely new magical race?"

Artemis gripped the table and leaned forwards, icy blue eyes burning into Dumbledore and Root. "Now, kindly remove yourselves and your compatriots from this property. Butler has gathered enough evidence for us to go to the Irish Ministry at any time, so please refrain from any more attacks. And Dumbledore, since your kind aren't bound by the same constraints as the People - rest assured that we _Muggles_ have ways to instantaneously transmit information, and the Irish Ministry is the least of your concerns. Also, due to your pathetic attempt at deception, every day that Harry is with me will cost you another 10 million Galleons from hereon. Consider it interest."

As the two guests turned away and began exiting the house furiously, they heard Artemis' voice ringing chillingly behind them, "Above all, remember that none of your kindred may step inside this manor so long as I am alive."

* * *

Artemis watched his guests disappear once they were outside Fowl Manor's walls.

'I have laid the bait. Now, will they take it?'

* * *

 **9 chapters down already! It seems like it was only yesterday when I came up with the idea and decided to write it up.**

 **Thank you for sticking with this story so far! I know that it started off slow, but the first few chapters were necessary for world-building purposes. Starting from this chapter, the action should steadily ramp up.**

 **I would conservatively estimate that we are halfway through the story at this point.**

 **Since this is my first fanfiction, I would really appreciate your advice/suggestions/reviews! Please R &R.**


	10. Chapter 10: Jailbreak

Chapter 10: Jailbreak

 _Two days after Root and Dumbledore met Artemis_

"You did what?!" Root erupted.

Cudgeon sniffed. He wondered how he could have been friends with such an uncouth figure for so long. 'Power is all that matters, and this is my moment to shine,' he kept repeating to himself, attempting to assuage his guilt at betraying his oldest friend.

"I merely informed the Council about the ongoing situation. They agreed with my assessment that we should handle this situation with more _finesse_ and formality going forwards."

Root snorted. "How are trolls," he spit out, "emblematic of a more elegant approach to the situation? You and I both know that trolls destroy everything in their path. One of my officers is in that manor, along with an innocent boy. We're putting them both at risk with this gambit of yours."

"Oh, Julius, why do you insist on fixating on the trolls? There is more to my plan, you know," Cudgeon sighed exasperatedly. "Unlike you, I am coordinating with the _proper_ authorities on the wizarding side - the British Ministry of Magic. Their liaison, Lucius Malfoy, and I are also sending in a wizarding strike force behind the trolls, so that while the trolls savage the kidnappers, the wizards can extract the hostages. Unlike those Order members" - at this Cudgeon sneered - "that your strike team worked with, these wizards should be the best and brightest that the Ministry can muster. Moreover, none of _our_ people are at risk in this endeavor, unlike last time."

"Except Holly."

"There's also the fact that you initiated first contact with an entirely new civilization and coordinated an entire rescue effort with a subset of said civilization, a vigilante group no less, without telling the Council a single word. Julius, you can't just do that and expect to get away with it scot-free. There needs to be accountability."

After a dramatic pause, Cudgeon continued pompously, "And that is why the Council has appointed me as the Acting-Commander of the LEP, Julius. This is nothing personal, just -"

Root held up a palm to forestall further explications from Cudgeon. "I get it, Briar. It's just politics. I should have seen you for what you really were. People kept warning me, you know - they always told me what an officious, self-serving bastard you were. But I valued our friendship too much to see it."

With that, he ripped off his badge, threw it onto the table, and stalked angrily out of the room. He left with a parting shot - "Enjoy the fruits of your treachery, _Acting-_ _Commander_ Cudgeon."

Cudgeon turned away impassively. He had no time to soothe affected egos. There were hostages to free, glory to be had...

* * *

Lucius absently rubbed his forearm as he smiled at the bumbling Minister. 'As much as I despise dealing with this idiot,' Lucius thought, 'there are definite advantages.'

Such as the fact that Fudge had just granted him carte blanche when it came to dealing with the People and handling the Harry-Potter-hostage situation. Until a week ago, Lucius was maneuvering the situation to gain custody of Harry Potter. But then his master had contacted him.

As he lay on the ground recovering from a bout of Crucios, Voldemort's sibilant voice rang, "Luciussss, be thankful that you can still make up for your infidelity. I have heard tell that Harry Potter is currently trapped in Fowl manor and that you have been angling to get hold of him."

"Ye..ye..yes, master," Lucius gasped in agony.

"I applaud your initiative, Lucius. However, Harry Potter is a threat to my power so long as he lives. He must be eliminated." Lucius shuddered as Voldemort's red eyes drew level with his own. "Arrange matters accordingly, and I will consider forgiving your family for abandoning me for the last decade."

"Yes, master, of course, master," Lucius said, bobbing his head.

Which was why Lucius was now sitting in front of Fudge, convincing him to spare a troll for the attack on Fowl Manor.

Fudge was being unusually reticent though. "I don't know, Lucius," he said wringing his hands. "Are you sure that trolls are really the way to go? I mean, I'm not worried about the Muggle kidnappers," he added hastily. "But what if the troll hurts Harry Potter?"

"Which is why my hand-picked strike team will follow the trolls," Lucius said patiently. "They will keep an eye on them to make sure that they stay focused on the Muggles alone. Once the trolls have begun devouring the Muggles - and you know what trolls are like - my team will have plenty of time to bring the Boy-Who-Lived back to safety."

"And the fairy hostage?" Fudge queried shrewdly.

Lucius waved his hand dismissively. "I never guaranteed their liaison that my team would extract their officer. I only promised that we would put our best effort towards that task, which gives us plenty of leeway."

Reassured, Fudge nodded and signed the documents requisitioning a Class X magical creature. "And I trust that you have an expert to shepherd the creature into striking range."

Lucius' lips curled into a sneer. "Of course - Quirinus Quirrell, the Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, has kindly volunteered his services for this effort. Dumbledore was the only obstacle, but -"

Fudge finished, "I have already dealt with him. Quite right, Lucius. It is only fitting that he lend a hand in this endeavor, especially after the mess he created with the failed negotiations and first strike. I mean, how could his group lose to a mere Muggle?"

The two shook their heads in disbelief at the very idea.

"Even if something goes wrong, just have the Prophet focus on how Dumbledore and his 'Order' utterly failed to best a Muggle," Lucius sneered. "In the best-case scenario, the trolls will so completely frighten the Muggles that they'll not only hand over both hostages, but will also submit willingly to mind-wipes, if only to escape the memories of having met the trolls."

"Of course, of course," Fudge chortled. "I am so glad to have you as my advisor, Lucius. You always seem to know exactly what to do. No wonder You-Know-Who Imperiused you all those years ago."

"Yes, ahem, that is why he _Imperiused_ me."

* * *

 _Five days after the meeting_

"No way, Julius. Do your dirty work yourself."

Mulch stared up at the red-faced former LEP commander stubbornly. "I am not entering a troll-rampage-zone to retrieve the trapped hostages. And since the Council has booted you out, you can't make me either."

"Convict -"

"Julius, if you want to convince a guy to risk his life," Mulch said with a put-upon sigh, enjoying the sight of Root's rapidly reddening face - "the proper thing to do is to use his name. Didn't your mother teach you any manners?"

Predictably, Julius lost his top at that. "YOU'RE TEACHING ME ABOUT MANNERS? YOU, MULCH SMART-MOUTH DIGGUMS, WHO CAN'T EVEN -"

But suddenly, Root stopped ranting, and his red face slowly returned to its normal color. Mulch felt a rising sense of alarm as - dare he say it - a hint of a smile began appearing on Root's face.

"You're right, Convict," Root began. "I can't FORCE you to risk your life for my Captain and your former accomplice, who is a little boy if I may remind you. But I was planning to offer you a sweet deal to drop the Tower of London charges..."

Root paused at that, watching Mulch salivate at the thought of getting out of jail early. At the moment, his longest sentence was for the mess created by the Tower of London heist - the LEP really did not appreciate the amount of cleanup that they had to perform afterwards.

"Not to mention that I will need to make a statement to the media and the Council at some point. Your name will be mentioned, of course."

If Root had been offering a carrot before, then here was the stick - 'Comply or the People will know that Mulch Diggums was to blame for the fact that one of their own could not be recovered from the Mudmen.' To make matters worse, Holly was not only a police officer but also the first female RECON officer. The former meant that law-enforcement officials would hate Mulch's guts, which frankly wouldn't be anything new.

The latter meant that pretty much every female underground would be looking to lynch Mulch. Including dwarven females.

Mulch's nagging conscience also didn't help the matter at all. While he could have conceived leaving Holly behind to the tender mercies of the troll (after all, she HAD been his arresting officer before his current stint in jail), he couldn't abandon his former partner, James (or Harry), if only because of the potential for thrilling future heists. 'And it is the right thing to do,' his conscience nagged irritatingly.

"So, Julius, about this job..."

* * *

 _Six days after the meeting (four days after Harry and Holly discovered the alcove)_

"Holly," Harry began hesitantly. Holly nodded encouragingly. 'We really need to break him out of this shyness about asking questions,' she thought. 'May those Dursleys be thrice-damned for suppressing his curiosity!'

"Remember our conversation about Mudmen in the dungeons?"

Holly's cheeks reddened in embarrassment. Harry's statements made much more sense now that she knew how the Dursleys had successfully convinced Privet Drive's residents that Harry was a delinquent. It didn't help that she had been acting a bit like them with her rant in the dungeons.

Harry rushed to reassure her. "No, no, I am not upset about what you said. That's water under the bridge. It's more, well -"

He broke off. Holly prompted him gently. "Go on."

"Why did you express such vehemence against Mudmen down there? I mean, I guess being kidnapped by Artemis is a decent enough reason, but that seemed to come from something deeper."

Holly looked at Harry appraisingly. 'Trust the kid to pick up on that. He really should have been an elf with that level of empathy.'

Harry mistook her glance for coldness. "Never mind," he mumbled. "I just thought that it might help you, I dunno, work through stuff. After talking to you about what I went through, I felt loads lighter. For the first time in ages, I'm not afraid of what's going to happen if I interact with people. I am not thinking of myself as a freak anymore."

Holly sighed. "I am glad that our conversation helped," she said gently. Sighing, she continued, "And we are friends, I suppose, so it's only fair that I answer your question in return. The reason that I dislike Mudmen is because they were responsible for killing my mother."

Seeing Harry's round eyes, she explained, "My mother was a whale researcher; she raised awareness of the barbarity of hunting and killing whales among the People, wiping out that practice among our brethren. She wanted to do the same among humans, so she often led raids against whaling ships."

"One of the raids went horribly wrong - she got the coordinates for a ship with nuclear waste. So, she boarded the ship as usual and scuttled it, but this time, she accidentally ended up with the waste in the water."

Wiping her eyes, Holly said brokenly, "She died six months later from cancer induced by radioactive poisoning. I had just joined the LEP and was hoping that she could attend the ceremony where I would receive the badge officially, but she died before that. Her last words were to live a good life and to not blame the Mudmen for her fate, which is the only reason that I didn't take my new Neutrino, go above-ground, and start blasting everything in sight."

Holly looked back at Harry, who was staring at her understandingly. Not with pity or sympathy but understanding. As an orphan, Harry had always wished to know what his parents were like; he had never believed the Dursleys' claims that they were just drunken layabouts, and after discovering his magic, he definitely didn't believe that they had just died in a car crash. But to actually know your parents for your whole life and then suddenly lose them to a freak accident like Holly had - that seemed loads worse in a way.

"I am sorry."

Holly stared at Harry strangely. "Why? You didn't kill her. Anyway, you were right back in the dungeons - the blame really belongs to whoever gave her the wrong coordinates, the ship owners, and so many other people - not all of humanity. Heck, I'm pretty sure that there are more animal-rights organizations above-ground now than below."

Harry shook his head. "Doesn't matter. The point is that she is not coming back. And I am sorry for your loss and for the fact that she died cleaning up my kind's mess."

He hesitated before continuing, "Thank you for giving me a chance, Holly."

* * *

 _Ten days after the meeting_

Artemis massaged his temples in a vain attempt to assuage his frustration. He had been riding so high off his success from the meeting with Commander Root and Headmaster Dumbledore that he had neglected to look into the infamous black wards until a few days ago. He scowled internally at the lost time as none of the tomes that he had read so far described a way to circumvent these wards.

Whether they triggered an alarm, annulled the effects of certain spells or potions, or just acted as simple barrier against spell-fire, all wards were essentially geared towards keeping people out of a target area. All wards, that is, except for black wards. Black wards instead focused on trapping people within the ward boundaries and leeching them of their life energy. Although they were more complicated to cast than regular wards, they were much cheaper to maintain since post-creation energy input would come from the victims inside the ward rather than from expensive ward-stones or runes. (As a side-note, goblins implemented a less potent variant of black wards within their high-priority vaults, so that thieves would be sucked in by the doors and trapped within the vault until they could be questioned.) Overall, since black wards went against the fundamental principles of warding itself, wizards had long abandoned research into the area and hadn't discovered any way to escape them.

Initially, Artemis had scoffed at the possibility that Dumbledore would be able to gather enough warding experts to impose black wards on Fowl Manor; after all, when the wizards last employed these wards against Grindelwald's forces in Nazi Germany, nearly forty goblin warders had been involved in the process. Artemis was fairly certain that the Goblin Nation wouldn't be as enthusiastic about providing warders for the current situation, even if it did involve the Boy-Who-Lived; from his studies on magical culture, he surmised that goblins utterly detested wizards and refrained from interfering in their matters unless their own livelihoods were at stake. Even in the worst-case scenario, Artemis would only be hitting the wizards' pocketbooks in this situation; with the help of the Irish Ministry, he had already taken care to set up a Gringotts account, so his earnings from this venture would ultimately just be a transfer between accounts, thereby keeping the fortune firmly within goblin hands. Of course, he would gradually withdraw this money from goblin control and bring it back into the mundane world - not that they needed to know that.

Then, a few days ago, Artemis had been struck by a terrible realization - like the black wards, the time-stop was also an extremely complicated magical ritual; in the old days, over one-hundred warlocks had to work together over a period of days, without taking a single break, to implement the ritual. Many a time-stop had been ruined, and entire campaigns had been lost due to a single participant's need to use the facilities in the middle of the process. However, the fairies had recently imposed a time-stop on Fowl Manor within a matter of hours; given that there were few warlocks remaining and the most powerful, the demon warlocks, had long disappeared, Artemis inferred that the People had successfully integrated the necessary magic with technology, vastly simplifying the entire process. Who was to say that they couldn't do the same to the black wards?

Since then, Artemis had been feverishly searching tomes from the alcove for an answer to his predicament. 'I cannot fail - the fate of the Fowl Empire, of mother, of _father_ rest on my shoulders.'

"Is there anything that I can do to help, Artemis?" Butler's voice came from behind him.

Artemis rubbed his eyes blearily and shook his head. As he heard the echo Butler's footsteps move further and further away from the room, he suddenly felt a flash of fear - _I need to check on mother._

Artemis shook his head and looked at the camera feed from his mother's room. There she was - safe and sound in her own imaginary world, with a paper-mache version of her husband. 'What on Earth instigated that panic attack? If anything, Butler would have noticed and subdued any intruders before they could sneeze. And the prisoners' - Artemis glanced down at the feed from the dungeons - 'are clearly trapped in the dungeons. Juliet has been monitoring them regularly, and the sedatives in their food should keep them docile.'

The flash of fear reappeared though and did not fade away this time. Butler had always advised him to listen to his instincts, so Artemis duly took a closer look at the surveillance feeds. His heart sped up as he observed that the feed from his mother's room flickered for a moment; for an instant, it had looked as though the room was _empty._

A similar flicker appeared in the dungeons' feed; Artemis picked up his walkie-talkie and spoke, "Juliet, please go check on the prisoners in the dungeon."

As soon as he issued that instruction, another element of surprise appeared - a hairy figure burrowed out of the ground in the wine cellar and began foraging through the surrounding barrels. "Butler, I need you to handle the intruder in the wine cellar."

"Affirmative, Artemis. Do you want him dead or alive?"

"Alive preferably. We will need to determine his affiliation at the very least. Although I suspect that he was sent by our friends from the LEP..."

Artemis tried to reassure himself that everything was still under control; after all, Butler could easily handle that small creature, and Juliet, who was as well-trained as Butler, could handle two drugged captives, one of whom currently had no access to magic. And it wasn't as if the dungeon feed had blacked out right?

The dungeon feed promptly blacked out at that moment.

Cursing, Artemis saw the feed from his mother's room flicker again. 'Mother! I need to protect her!'

Artemis leaped out of his chair and ran through the gloomy hallways with unusual alacrity. At the moment, all thoughts of monitoring the situation or keeping watch over the manor's security feeds had flown out of his head; the sole remaining thought in his head was to _protect Mother._

As Artemis climbed the stairs two at a time, he heard his mother's giggling, "Don't worry so much, Papa. It's just a night of fun; Arty and I will be back from our date before midnight." His heart pounded in fear and fury as he heard an indistinct answer.

'How dare they! This intruder will pay with his life for taking advantage of my mother in this state,' he swore. Without any hesitation, Artemis slammed the door open and rushed into the room, looking around frantically for the intruder.

But all he saw was his mother and the paper-mache toy that she was pretending was his father. Angeline turned to him in confusion. "Who do you think you are, barging into our private suites? Do you know who my husband is, young man?"

A lump rose to Artemis' throat. 'My own mother can't recognize me,' he thought bitterly.

Of course, the door had to slam shut behind him at that moment. Startled, Artemis rushed back to the door and tried to wrest it open with all of his strength, which incidentally wasn't anything to speak off even among his own age group. A genius he may be but an athlete or bodybuilder he was not.

A sly voice rang from behind the door, "Well, well, _Arty_. The shoe's on the other foot now, isn't it?" It turned cold. "This is payback for effectively enslaving me, bastard."

A wave of red passed over Artemis' vision. "By the power of your blood, Harry James Potter," he yelled with spittle flying out of his mouth, "I command you to release me from this room."

Harry chuckled, eerily imitating Artemis' own laughter. "Arty, give me some credit here. I have been a pickpocket on the streets of London for over two years now and practically subsisted on stolen food before then. Do you honestly think that I didn't take advantage of your mad flight right now to steal the vial of blood that you took from me?"

Artemis' hands sprang to his pockets; his heart sank as he realized that the vial was indeed gone.

"Don't worry, Arty. Think of this as quality mother-son time. I seriously think that you wouldn't be so messed up if you took some time to appreciate what you have," Harry said scathingly. "I'll leave you to it then, hm?"

As Harry's footsteps moved further and further away from Angeline's room, Artemis could only sink to the floor in anger and frustration. 'No, no. Everything's going wrong. I can't fail - not now, not like this.'

* * *

Butler meticulously surveyed the wine cellar. He could see the hole that the intruder had used to enter the house. 'Tunneling into the manor - that's a new one.' But the intruder himself seemed to have vanished.

Meanwhile, our favorite reprobate, Mulch Diggums, and his equally roguish compatriot, Mundungus Fletcher, were raiding every safe between the wine cellar and the dungeons.

"Mulch, old mate, if I had ten of you, I could rob Gringotts blind in a day," Mundungus said dreamily, imagining the piles of wizarding gold that could be spent on Firewhiskey.

"Mundungus, no offense, matey, but you stink. And I mean literally," Mulch stated bluntly. "The only reason that I let you come along with me was because of that 'Alohomora spell of yours (which really saves time on cracking safes) and your invisibility cloak. From what I heard about the man-mountain, we're really going to need that cloak."

"Oh please, lighten up, Mulch. Between us, we've run rings around the toughest law-enforcement in both of our worlds. I mean, how hard could this guy be after them?"

"Hehehe, you've got a point there, Fletcher. I mean, the coppers probably got so shocked by the fact that he could see them that they probably keeled over in a faint. The tales of the 'man-mountain' or the 'kung-fu warrior' are just a cover-up for the fact they're a bliddy group of pansies. Right, Fletcher? Fletcher? Fletcher, what's up mate? Why the drawn face?"

Mundungus had stopped moving and was now staring at the space behind Mulch with a wide-open mouth. Mulch gulped. "Oh shoot, he's behind me, isn't he?" Mundungus bobbed his head.

Mulch turned around slowly. 'Oh god, I don't want to die today. I haven't even gotten the chance to visit the Bahamas yet.'

He saw nothing.

Growling, he turned back to Mundungus, who was guffawing. "Very funny, Fletcher. You're a riot, you are," Mulch ground out at him.

Wiping his eyes, Mundungus retorted, "Should've seen your face, mate. You looked like -"

He never finished that sentence as two fists came crashing down against the sides of his head and sent him into oblivion.

* * *

Butler stared down at the dwarf and the unconscious wizard. 'Judging from their rough appearance and...distinct smell..., they're accomplished thieves. Or not so accomplished given their loud banter and haphazard search process. I mean, leaving every cracked safe _open_? Might as well lay breadcrumbs to mark their path of progress."

Butler cracked his fists threateningly. "Who and what are you? Who sent you?" he growled out.

Unfortunately for Butler, Mulch had been seriously stressed out since the beginning of the mission. After the LEP and the Order had spectacularly failed to retrieve the captives from Fowl Manor, they had attempted to hush up all tales of the "man-mountain" and his formidable skill; naturally, the secret had quickly spread among the rest of the ranks and eventually among the prisoners themselves. To make matters worse, Mundungus had been flippant throughout the mission, and his most recent joke had nearly given him a heart-attack. Seeing the man-mountain in person, threatening to pound him to flesh, was the final straw.

Mulch turned away from Butler, and his bum flaps sprang open. Butler barely had a chance to say another word when a huge burst of wind exploded towards him with a "BOOM!"

'My god, what is that smell?' was Butler's last conscious thought.

* * *

Juliet walked from the kitchens to the dungeons grumbling, "Juliet, cook dinner for the prisoners. Juliet, go check on the drooling prisoners. Juliet, do this, do that. All orders and not a word of appreciation. Would it kill Arty to show a little gratitude once in a while?"

In her irritation with Artemis, Juliet neglected to wear sunglasses as she usually did. So, when she stepped into the dungeons, she saw Holly sitting in a chair and smiling innocently at her. Before she could react, a beautiful, mellifluous voice rang, "Would you kindly escort me out of these dungeons? They are getting soooo stuffy..."

"Hmmmm, yes, they are stuffy," Juliet mumbled dreamily. She was supposed to be doing something for Artemis, but that voice was so beautiful, so full of truth that she had to obey it. And those eyes...

Holly maintained eye contact with Juliet as she moved towards her. Once she had drawn level with her, she beckoned Juliet to bend her head downwards, and Juliet obliged. Staring deep into Juliet's eyes, Holly ordered, "Get me out of this manor."

"Sure, outta this manor, got it mademoiselle," Juliet cried out.

'Ok, this Mudgirl is obviously way too drunk on _mesmer_ currently to be of any use to us. Guess the doctor is going to have to order a little bit of TV.'

"Juliet," Holly's dulcet tones sounded, "you will lock yourself within these dungeons and binge-watch wrestle-mania." Lord knows that the girl had prattled on about wrestling for hours whenever she had visited the dungeons.

Juliet's brows furrowed in confusion. "But there's no TV down here," she muttered slowly.

Holly intensified the _mesmer_. "Yes, there is, Juliet. They just installed a 72-inch flat-screen on that wall over there a few days ago. Now, are you going to pass this opportunity by?"

"No! I have to see Hogman beat Turtleneck guy!" she cried out. 'Sheesh, what's up with these wrestling names,' Holly mused.

"You do that," Holly agreed. So, as Juliet began enjoying a wrestling match that was generated purely by her imagination on an imaginary 72-inch flat-screen TV, Holly slipped out of the dungeons for the final time and raced up the stairs.

* * *

Harry was waiting for her with a broad smile by the entrance. "My compulsion charms worked!" Harry gloated triumphantly. "I trapped Artemis upstairs and got back the vial of blood. How about you?"

"Juliet's trapped in the dungeons, and Butler..."

"is down for the count," Mulch interjected.

The pair gaped at Mulch in astonishment. "Diggums," Holly exclaimed, "What are you doing here?"

Mulch raised his palms modestly. "Yep, me! Little old me brought down the man-mountain who beat the Order and the LEP with a bit of dwarf gas. Good to see you, James. Root and Dumbledore sent me in to extract the two of you."

Harry scrutinized Mulch carefully. "You look familiar..."

Mulch rolled his eyes. "Of course, I do. We were partners in crime, remember? Does 'Tower of London' ring a bell?"

Holly looked at the pair suspiciously as Harry's eyes grew wide. Before Harry could blurt out details about that job ('good times indeed') and provoke Holly into ranting about the job's aftermath, Mulch hurriedly said, "Listen guys, we need to get you two out of here while you have the upper hand. I'm still not sure how you two broke free though..."

"Harry here," Holly nodded her head at him with a smile, "studied up on compulsion charms - apparently, Fowl's been getting his info on wizards from this alcove of magical tomes. Anyways, we were search for a way to break free of the blood-binding that Artemis performed on Harry, and we found information on illusions and compulsions instead. Harry's a natural at both of those."

Harry took up the story from here. "Actually, Holly really helped me figure out how to improve the accuracy and duration of the charms. I was originally just throwing all of my power into them, but that exhausted me within a minute or two. Instead, I started to drive them with just a trickle of power. The key was figuring out how to trick Artemis, and invisibility and illusions were central to that effort."

At Mulch's quizzical look, Harry responded, "I created an illusion of myself and Holly in the dungeons and tied them to the cameras. Usually, my magic causes electronics to fizzle out. But one of the tomes told me that if I inscribed a few runes on an object, I could draw on its energy to temporarily power an illusion. I tried it with the camera on a whim, and it worked! After that, we snuck into the surveillance room at night (using disillusioning spells) and reviewed the videos. We saw that Dumbledore mentioned black wards, and Artemis seemed a bit puzzled by that for a second. We also saw that Artemis was monitoring his mother, who was" - at this, a flash of pity crossed Harry's face - "unwell. So, I sent out small but continuous waves of compulsion to provoke Artemis into investigating black wards. Once he got worried enough about them, I just had to wait until he was so deep in his research that he had taken his attention off the surveillance - that way, he'd believe that he'd missed someone entering the house and going up to his mother's room. A few more compulsions later, on top of his own worries, and presto!"

Harry knew that he sounded like a hyperactive rabbit at the moment, but he couldn't help it! His and Holly's plan had worked! And he had learned so much more about his magic and culture - about Hogwarts, Diagon Alley, house elves. 'I am not alone! There are others like me, and there's so much more to learn!'

Mulch responded, "Well, that's great kid. I'm happy for you and all, but we need to get out of here!"

Harry sobered at that. "Holly still needs to perform the Ritual though. We couldn't find any substitutes for it in the tomes, and none of us have the necessary acorn."

Mulch rolled his eyes. "Way ahead of you." He took out a small device from his pant pockets and opened it to reveal a cache of acorns from ancient oaks. "Foaly sends his regards, Captain."

Holly grabbed hold of an acorn reverently and walked outside. She reveled in the light breeze and fresh air - 'all I need are my wings now. Wings and magic.' Taking a deep breath, she dug a small hole in the soil near the rosebuds where one of her compatriots had unsuccessfully hidden from Butler only a few days ago and dropped the acorn into the hole.

One second passed. Then another. Then, a spark leaped from the acorn to Holly's outstretched finger and laced through her body. She was filled with a rush of energy, and a shower of sparks surrounded her. Harry looked on with awe as the light show escalated, surrounding Holly in a ball of multicolored sparks.

Holly could feel the magic wash away her tiredness and all of her recent wounds and injuries. As the sparks receded, and the Ritual drew to a conclusion, she opened her eyes. Smiling at Harry's awestruck face, she nodded to Mulch, "Mulch, do you have comms equipment?"

Mulch nodded and handed her a small earpiece. Holly slipped it on greatfully. "Foaly, Commander Root, this is Captain Short. I and my fellow captive, Harry Potter, have broken free."

Underground, Foaly broke out into a jig. "Holly, thank Frond that you're ok. What is your status?"

"Alive and kicking free, looking for ways out of this pit. Foaly, Artemis gave me a direct command to stay inside the manor and to not attempt escaping. Any ideas on how to countermand this?"

Foaly rubbed his chin. "Difficult to say, really. If there was a way to do it, I would bet on demon warlock magic, but they've been gone for millennia, and none of the People have the raw magical power to fuel their spells anymore."

Holly nodded thoughtfully. "None of us. But what about..." she looked at Harry meaningfully.

Foaly caught her drift. "Depends - how old is Harry? Does he have a wand?"

Holly passed over the comms to him, and Harry spoke haltingly. "No, I don't have a wand. But I think that I do my magic differently from other wizards. Moreover, I read about how we could use runes to amplify magical rituals in one of the tomes?"

"Depends on the runes we're talking about. But even then, we're talking about massive amounts of power here - regular fairies' or humans' bodies would be overloaded, which is why you wizards usually use wands."

"Usually," Harry agreed. "But you might find that I am an exception to the norm." Patting the vial of blood in his pockets, Harry added, "Not to mention, I think I know how we can enhance the runes' power too..."

* * *

Meanwhile, the tunnels below Fowl Manor started rumbling. Two large misshapen creatures with giant clubs stumbled towards the hole that had been dug by an intrepid dwarf only a few hours ago.

The trolls had arrived.

* * *

 **Notes:**

 **Another action-packed chapter! And yes, Harry and Holly have finally broken out!**

 **To answer one of my reviewer's questions, Dumbledore didn't apparate back into the house and spell Artemis into releasing Harry because he doesn't want to antagonize the Irish Ministry and spark a war. Being who he is, Artemis has already arranged a way for the entire meeting to be recorded and sent to the Irish Ministry, which would only see a British magical sabotaging peace talks by attacking one of its Strategic Defense Coordinator. Moreover, even though the wards had been weakened, they hadn't been completely taken down, so Dumbledore's power is limited within the wards' area (e.g., no apparition), and the Irish Ministry would be there on the spot if any curses are cast inside the ward boundaries.**

 **The wards did not keep out the LEP strike team because they were designed with _humans_ in mind, not fairies. Wizarding arrogance at its finest - after all, even Voldemort didn't design his wards around the locket horcrux to keep out house elves.**

 **In response to one of my other reviewers, yes, I am horrible at writing dialogue. It's way harder than it looks, and I have gained a newfound appreciation for other fanfiction authors who write dialogue-intensive stories.**


	11. Chapter 11: When The Trolls Came

Chapter 11: When the Trolls Came

"Care to explain why we're engraving Gnommish runes onto these ward-stones and adding drops of blood on top of the runes?" Mulch inquired.

"The overall idea is that I am going to will my magic to free Holly from Artemis' (or really, the demon warlocks') constraints. From what we gathered from the tomes, my magic alone won't be enough though, so we are using the runes and ward-stones as enhancers," Harry explained. "The Gnommish runes are all related to liberation, so I won't need to expend as much effort shaping my magic to my intent. As I push energy into the ward-stones, the runes will also help redirect the stones' inherent energy towards the ritual."

"So, will the wards be down temporarily then since the ward-stones' energy is being redirected during the ritual?" Mulch asked curiously.

Harry shrugged. "Yeah, but I'm not too chuffed about it, to be honest, after our lovely stay here."

"Wait, what purpose does your blood serve in all this?"

Harry and Holly exchanged looks at that question. "Protection, and if I am lucky, compensation for services rendered," Harry responded mysteriously.

* * *

Artemis was currently seated in a meditative pose, attempting to ascertain ways to restore his hold over the situation; from what he had observed of the events in the manor's courtyard, the Captain had regained her magic, and the intrepid pair were last combining Harry's blood with the manor's ward-stones and a series of Gnommish runes - 'presumably to circumvent my direct commands to Holly.' Artemis estimated that, given the pair's enhanced understanding of magic, the entire process would take another 10-15 minutes, and the captives would be well out of his reach within an hour. 'Where the devil are Juliet and Butler?!'

Artemis' melancholy was shattered when the door to his mother's room burst open, and a figure leaped at him and landed a solid punch on his jaw. "That was for kidnapping and imprisoning us," Holly snapped at him. Nodding at Harry, she turned back to the fallen Artemis and said mockingly, "Now, be a good little boy and follow Harry's orders. I'll be sure to bring you a lollipop afterwards."

As she dashed out of the room, Artemis retorted, "I don't like lollipops." 'Seriously? What kind of evil villain says that?'

Shaking his head to forestall any further quips, Harry hurriedly explained to Artemis that the LEP had -

"Oh, good, the trolls are finally here. I expected the People to have sent them over days ago. Butler should be able to handle them," Artemis interjected.

Harry looked at Artemis incredulously. "No offense, but I think that you're giving Butler a bit too much credit here. I mean, have you seen the trolls? Anyway, the trolls aren't our only problem; a group of dark wizards"- _Death Eaters, a voice whispered in Harry's mind_ \- "are breaking into the manor using the same vulnerability as the trolls. While Holly and Butler manage the trolls, we're going to have handle the Death Eaters."

"Why should I believe you? You were my captive until a short while ago, and it would be in your best interest to see me incapacitated. Why on Earth wouldn't you escape the manor when you had the first opportunity?" Artemis exclaimed incredulously.

Harry had been asking himself the same question for the last few minutes. Using his blood, a set of Gnommish runes that they had found in one of the alcove's tomes, the ward-stones provided to Fowl Manor by the Irish Ministry, and sheer willpower, Harry and Holly had successfully countermanded Artemis' orders. At last, they were FREE!

But they didn't have a chance to celebrate their newfound freedom since Foaly had frantically reappeared on the comlink and had warned Holly to escape Fowl Manor as quickly as possible. Apparently, certain consultants had apprised the Fairy Council and the British Ministry of Magic of the situation, and instead of responding with the usual bureaucratic inertia, they had opted to follow the consultants' recommendation to send trolls into Fowl Manor to disrupt the kidnappers and free the hostages.

Holly was sorely tempted to leave the Fowls to their fate. After all, none of this would have happened if Artemis hadn't kidnapped them in the first place. But then she remembered Juliet - the girl _had_ been annoying whenever she had visited the dungeons, with her prattling about wrestling, but she was also _innocent._ At sixteen, she was still practically a child, especially in fairy terms. And until Harry had busted them out of the dungeons, Juliet's company had been welcome, at least as a distraction from her current situation.

Holly looked soberly at her grinning friend. 'To think that I'm friends with a Mudboy. I wouldn't have seen that happening a month ago.'

"Harry, the People and the wizards have sent trolls to bust us out of the manor. I don't know how much you know about trolls, so here's the quick recap: they're dumb and absolutely uncontrollable. They destroy _everything_ in their path. I wouldn't shed a tear if Artemis was the only victim, but there are innocents in that manor, and we can't leave them to the trolls' mercies. So, I'm going back in. You don't have to follow me; you've done enough as it is. Either way," - Holly looked Harry in the eye at this point - "it truly has been my pleasure, Harry."

Harry looked directly back at Holly and responded, "You're the first friend that I've had. I'm not giving you up that easily, mate. Where you go, I'll go."

At this point, they both turned to Mulch, who scowled. "Bloody heroes," he grumbled. "I've already done my part in this drama - you two are free now. I'm doing the sensible thing now and getting out of here before the chaos begins."

"We'll escort you to your escape point," Harry offered. Mulch looked guilty for a moment but covered it up with a gruff nod. 'I've got to stay alive, and that's all that matters.'

Later, as Mulch saw the trolls burst through the hole that he had created hours earlier in the wine cellar, he could only think that karma was a swift mistress.

* * *

"You did confiscate wands and weapons from the strike team that Butler defeated, right? If so, where are they?" Harry said tersely as he and Artemis briskly walked down the stairs back into the surveillance room.

"Yes and right here," Artemis responded, moving towards a supposedly ordinary wall in the surveillance room. He stared directly into the highest-level camera and firmly pressed his thumb against a seemingly plain groove on the wall; his computer beeped, "Retinal and fingerprint identification complete." The sound of gears shifting echoed through the room as the wall slowly retreated and slid sideways gradually.

"Wow, you really like spy movies, don't you," Harry commented.

"I highly value my security, thank you very much. I would suppose that as a thief yourself, you would understand," Artemis shot back. He couldn't resist sneaking in a retort as a retaliation for Harry's comments from when he had trapped him in Angeline's room.

Artemis still didn't understand how Harry knew that Death Eaters were going to attack the manor. After all, according to the Grimoire, hadn't they been disbanded after Harry had defeated Voldemort eight years ago?

When he attempted to convey his skepticism to Harry upstairs, Harry had shoved him against a wall and hissed, "Listen - you can argue with me all day, or you can use your genius brain to help me take these guys down. I promise you, if you don't help me now, they will _ravage_ you and your mother."

'I wonder whether this is related that nasty-looking scar,' Artemis mused as Harry rubbed at the scar yet again. He observed that it seemed _redder_ than usual; if it got any more inflamed, he wouldn't be surprised to see blood leaking out of it.

Harry closed his eyes to ward off the mounting headache. As he and Holly saw the trolls crashing through Mulch's hole, his scar had burst into fire, and he had been pulled into a vision.

 _Harry saw a gold-haired man whispering to a group of dark-robed figures. 'Wait a minute, I recognize those white masks,' Harry thought. 'Those are the same masks that Tom's compatriots usually wore in my nightmares.'_

 _Harry felt his head turn away from this cabal and tilt upwards towards the troll in front of him. His eyes widened. 'Wait, they must be sending in a second troll then. As if one wasn't bad enough.'_

 _Harry's voice came out smoothly in a series of grunts, and his finger sharply gestured in the direction of Fowl Manor. At the same time, Harry also saw the translation for this series of actions run through his mind like ghosts in the wind - "Food in that direction. Kill all little boys. Go, hunt."_

 _The troll looked back at him confused for a moment. But his repeated mentions of food eventually got the message through, and the beast turned away before lumbering off into the tunnel leading to Fowl Manor._

 _Harry turned back to this compatriots. "My brothers and sistersss, now is the moment when you can prove your continuing loyalty to me. Harry Potter is in that manner. Kill him, and avenge the blow that he dealt our cause all those years ago. This will mark the rebirth, both of myself and of our campaign to cleanse this world of Muggle and Mudblood filth. To me, Death Eaters!"_

 _Harry felt rising panic as the Death Eaters roared in unison, and the vision began fading away._

'I can't afford to be drawn into another vision now,' Harry thought with gritted teeth. 'That was ten minutes ago, and we probably have another five minutes before they decide it's safe enough to follow the trolls into the manor.'

Mulch, of course, had quickly disappeared after seeing the first troll entering the house, so that venue was closed. Which left Artemis and Butler - the strategist and the warrior - as their only possible allies.

Artemis gestured at the boxes of guns and wands in the room. "Have your pick."

Nodding at him in thanks, Harry stuffed one of the Neutrinos into his pant pockets and rummaged through the wands. "What about you," he shot back at Artemis absently. "Aren't you going to pick out a weapon or two?"

Artemis looked at the Neutrinos with distaste. Harry laughed at his expression. "What? Not used to defending yourself? Then again, with Butler around, I suppose a rich boy like yourself never had to get his hands dirty, did he?"

Artemis' face flushed red. "If you must know, I have hacked into the world's most prominent financial institutions and manipulated billions of pounds of transactions in a single day alone."

"Maybe so," Harry said agreeably. "But that doesn't really help when your home is about to be invaded, hm?"

"I can see that you obviously don't like me. Why are you trying to defend us then?" Artemis inquired curiously.

Harry's green eyes locked directly with Artemis' own icy-blue eyes; for a moment, Artemis felt as though Harry were looking directly at his soul and judging his worthiness. The moment passed as Harry shrugged. "Tell me why you became a thief."

Artemis cocked his eyebrow. "The challenge, the thrill of triumphing over my opponents and achieving my goals. Is there really another reason for becoming a thief?"

Harry looked almost...disappointed...with that answer. "I became a thief because I didn't have a choice. I needed to survive, whether it was with my relatives or on the streets. I've heard stories about the System" - he shuddered at that - "and I decided that it's much better being free on the streets and stealing for survival."

He sneered at Artemis, "Then again, a rich boy like you never had to worry about getting the next meal. No, you always knew that there would be a breakfast, lunch, and dinner waiting for you at the right time and place. You even had loving parents to boot. And you're a thief just for kicks?"

At that, Artemis felt a wave of indignation rising within him. "I'm not just doing it for the 'kicks,' as you so eloquently put it," he sneered. "I'm doing it to get my father back."

He'd said too much; Artemis promptly clammed up and looked away from Harry. But Harry was curious now.

"Wait a minute - I didn't see your father at all in any of the surveillance feeds or in any part of the house. What happened to him?"

Artemis gave Harry the gimlet eye; his first inclination was to tell the younger boy to sod off, but - maybe it was the suppressed guilt at having kidnapped him and Holly and at essentially enslaving him through blood magic - he blurted, "I held you and Holly as hostages because I need gold to fund a search-and-rescue effort for my father, who is trapped somewhere in the Arctic Circle now."

Harry stared at Artemis blankly. Artemis waited for the pity - oh, how he hated that - or sympathy, but instead, Harry's eyes softened, and he saw - _respect_.

"Thank you," the younger boy responded softly, "for telling me."

Artemis nodded. In a bid to change topics to less weighty areas (as if defending the house from Death Eaters somehow qualifies), he said, "Well, I am practically useless when it comes to any sort of physical activity or actual defense."

"Maybe so. But you've managed to outwit both the People and the wizards through your intellect alone. Any ideas on how we can beat the Death Eaters?" Harry asked intensely. "I can take care of them magically, but I'm younger and less-experienced/powerful than them, so we need guerilla attacks here."

Artemis closed his eyes and meditated. As the house shook with another round of explosions, his eyes opened, and Artemis said, "The following strategy has 60% probability of success..."

* * *

As Nott and his fellow Death Eaters scrambled out of the tunnel, they took care to stick to the walls and avoid the wild swings of the angry bull troll. Fortunately for them, there was plenty of space in the wine cellar.

Nott's eyebrows shot up as he saw a giant human - _the infamous Butler, I presume_ \- charge the troll. Upon seeing the human, the elder Crabbe and Goyle thanked their stars that the troll was distracting him sufficiently at the moment. 'He must have giant blood in him somewhere, I swear.'

They were even more surprised to see a fairy officer maneuver about the space like a ninja, firing one of those Muggle guns - _except it shoots spells? Because those lights don't look like bullets._ \- at the troll.

Nott murmured to his compatriots, "We were unable to retrieve the fairy hostage since she inexplicably decided to help the kidnappers defend against the trolls and attacked our strike force. Whatever happened to her common sense?" They nodded in agreement.

The group stealthily made their way out of the wine cellar and up the stairs. Nott cast the Four-Point Spell again - _Harry Potter is upstairs_ \- and deliberately made his way towards the surveillance room.

"Boss, look! There's a secret room behind this painting," one of his fellow Death Eaters exclaimed.

"Quite, you fool! Do you want to practically send Fowl and Potter a party invitation saying that we're on our way?" Nott hissed. Nevertheless, he was curious about the secret room that had been sighted. What if the pair were hiding in there?

"Whoa, boss, do you see that light coming from the room?"

Nott peered at the light. 'What in the world is that?' he wondered.

He didn't have time to examine it further as the light suddenly exploded. Nott and his fellow Death Eaters were blinded by the explosion, and in the confusion, Crabbe and Goyle started firing spells willy-nilly.

Of course, the Death Eaters were never renowned for their intelligence - just their cruelty and quick draw. The latter worked against them here as some of Crabbe and Goyle's victims immediately retaliated with their own wayward spells. The net result: friendly fire alone took out half of the invading force.

As Nott and the remaining half scrambled out of the way, they heard loud "Krzzzt" noises come from above them. These noises ended with blasts slamming through the Death Eaters' shields and stunning several Death Eaters.

"They've got guns!" Nott roared. "Evade, and fire Cruciatus and Killing Curses back at them!"

* * *

Harry shook his head in disbelief. 'How can anyone be such a bad shot?' he wondered as Artemis fired down across the staircase on the crowd of Death Eaters. Then again, he did have the benefit of training with Holly for the last few days in the alcove as he had practiced aiming and shooting spells with his hands.

He pulled Artemis away from the staircase as the group began firing off curses against them. The pair disapparated back to the surveillance room. "Artemis, are you sure that you want to do this?"

Artemis nodded coolly. "We each know our parts. Let the games begin."

* * *

Nott blinked frantically in an effort to clear the light spots from his vision. 'Blasted boy! Blinding me with an overpowered Lumos, I'll show that brat..."

"Hello, imbeciles," a cold voice rang out from his side. Nott stumbled and turned towards the voice.

"I believe that I was to be the target of the mission?" the voice continued condescendingly. "Then again, a pack of howler monkeys would have been far more successful than you, I'm sure."

A wave of red passed over Nott's vision. How dare this Mudblood insult him, he who was personally handpicked by the Dark Lord to lead this mission? The Boy-Who-Lived wasn't going to live any longer, not if Nott had any say in the matter.

Nott scrambled over his fellow Death Eaters, and with a roar, rushed towards the voice. He could see the black-hair, stiff pose - it had to be the Brat-Who-Lived. His Lord would be most pleased with him.

"Death Eaters, to me!" he roared, and they obediently followed. Let it never be said that Death Eaters had an abundance of creativity or individuality.

The figure turned and raced away from them. They could hear it gasping, struggling to maintain the pace. 'I thought the boy was living on the streets?' Nott thought confusedly before dismissing it. 'Obviously, he wasn't any good at it.'

The chase ended abruptly as the boy stopped, panting, in a room next to a fancy-looking computer and a set of cameras.

"Nowhere to go, Mudblood," Nott gloated. "Time to die. Avada Kev-"

The last thing Nott knew was a flash of pain against his side. As he fell to the ground, he saw his compatriots' bodies slump down beside him. 'What just happened?'

* * *

Harry gulped a sigh of relief. All of the Death Eaters were down for the count; only the trolls remained.

"I can't believe that actually worked," he remarked, clambering down from the chair and nudging one of the fallen bodies with his foot.

Artemis shrugged. "Given that they were blinded by your light spell, they couldn't tell the difference between me and you. So, while I led them on a merry chase through the hallways and gradually led them to the surveillance room, you had the time to levitate the Neutrinos and position them so as to fire a direct shot at every Death Eater."

"Yeah, it sounds simple when you say it like that," Harry snorted. "I imagine it wasn't so simple when you were dashing through the hallways."

"Or when you had to levitate those Neutrinos and hold them in the right position until I brought our guests over?" Artemis countered. "Without me, it's more likely that you would have tried something more stupid or blunt, like attacking the group head-on with a series of spells. _Magicals..._ so lacking in common sense."

'Well, we'll never be bosom friends. Still, it's not like you can still hate somebody after you end up taking down a group of these monsters with their help. Especially when you couldn't have come up with such a brilliant strategy even on your best day,' Harry mused. So, he said haltingly to Artemis, "Brilliant strategy."

Artemis' features slackened, and he turned his icy-blue eyes towards Harry. "Thank you."

Before the detente could progress any further, a nauseating smell filled the room, and Harry noticed how _quiet_ the manor had suddenly gotten. Smiling weakly at Artemis, he ventured, "Let me guess, this is when the other troll attacks, right?"

As Artemis opened his mouth to respond, a club crashed through the windows and slammed directly into Harry, sending him flying into a wall.

* * *

'Trust Mulch to abandon us in this pickle and save his own hide,' Holly thought grimly. Then again, the dwarf had already used up his gaseous reserves on Butler - _who still stinks_ , so he didn't really have anything left to deter a bull troll.

Butler shook his head after the troll threw him through two walls, straight into the dungeons. "Juliet, what are you doing?" he muttered confusedly upon seeing his sister cheering a blank wall.

"Shhhh, big bro! I'm watching Hogman use the clothesline technique against Turban-Guy! This is the biggest match of the series!"

'Ok, Holly and Harry obviously bewitched her. I need to get her out of here.'

"Juliet," he said shaking her by the shoulders, "snap out of it. You need to get out of here."

Juliet pushed Butler back. "No, you big brute! Hogman, I know you can do it!"

Shaking his head, he hoisted Juliet over his shoulders as she pounded her fists against his back, like a baby throwing a tantrum. Before he could get any further though, Holly suddenly flew past him, through the hole that he had created in the dungeon walls.

The troll stepped through the hall.

'Protect baby sis,' was the only thought running through Butler's head. He unceremoniously dumped Juliet onto the ground, collected the spear that he had dropped onto the ground, and charged the troll again.

This time, rather than relying primarily on his bulk and fists, Butler danced around the troll, jabbing the spear into fleshy-looking areas through gaps in the troll's defense. One of his jabs hit the mark - the troll roared in pain and sank to the floor.

Before Butler could celebrate though, the troll did something unexpected - it grabbed hold of the bed that Holly had been chained to and threw it at Juliet.

'Shoot.'

The moment of distraction that this maneuver brought was enough for the troll to grab Butler and slam him against the wall. Unlike previous times though, the troll slammed him against the wall multiple times, attempting to batter him into unconsciousness. Butler fought valiantly and stabbed his spear at the troll whenever he got close to its body, but this only enraged the troll further.

The problem was that troll flesh is incredibly tough; it is both magically and physically resistant, so nothing short of goblin steel would be able to penetrate it.

As Butler's world started fading into black, he felt a blast of pain in his chest - the troll had decided to gore him through the chest with its tusks. 'Taking no chances, I see,' he thought detachedly.

'Juliet, Artemis, I'm sorry - I've failed you.'

* * *

Holly gasped in pain as she applied pressure to her side to limit the blood outflow. 'Who in Frond's name decided to send in trolls as a part of an _extraction_ mission?' she thought.

She saw Butler go down. 'That's it - my Neutrino was just an annoyance more than anything. Butler was the only one who was actually a serious threat.'

As the troll approached the unconscious Juliet tentatively and sniffed her, Holly crawled over to Butler's fallen body. 'Internal bleeding, several broken ribs - he needs a healing soon if he's to survive.'

Glancing at Juliet and the wary troll, Holly turned back to Butler and put her hands on his bloody chest. "I hope that you can win the second round, Mudman, because I don't have enough juice for a third," she muttered. " _Heal._ "

* * *

Butler opened his eyes slowly. 'I'm not dead. How?'

As he surveyed his environment, he saw traces of blue sparks knitting flesh back together on his chest. 'Fairy healing. But -'

Butler saw the elfin captain kneeling beside him, coping with her own injuries. 'I'd say a few broken ribs at the very least. And she used her magic to heal me?'

But all of these thoughts were driven out of his mind when he saw the troll prodding Juliet. 'Nobody messes with my little sister.'

Except unlike last time, when he had still been recovering from the dwarf gas and the troll's initial assault, Butler had his full wits about him now - the same wits that enabled him to take down the LEP strike team and the Order the other day. 'Frontal assault won't work - he' stronger than me. I'm going to need some armor and a Sig Sauer. Swords may not have pierced that flesh, but bullets should. And that bit of flesh near the eyebrows - we haven't tried hitting that yet, have we?'

So, Butler lumbered out of the dungeons and took armor and weapons from one of the medieval knights' displays. Picking up his fallen coat, he removed the Sig Sauer from its pockets; he held onto it in his left hand while his right hand firmly grasped a jousting lance.

Butler stepped back into the dungeons, ready for a rematch.

* * *

Holly looked up at the sound of metal entering the dungeons. She nearly groaned at the sight of Butler in medieval armor. 'Hasn't he realized that a frontal assault isn't going to work against this thing, no matter how much armor you've got?' she thought angrily.

She once again felt the urge to groan as Butler spoke, "Step away from the girl, and we'll all be fine."

She realized her mistake almost at once though. While the words themselves sounded like macho repartee, it was the tone that made a world of a difference - Butler was speaking softly and quietly, almost like a trainer did to a spooked unicorn.

The troll turned away from Juliet and faced the human again. Usually, its prey, especially the ones gored by its tusks, stayed down for the count, but this one was different - this one had managed to get back up, and instead of running away, was actually leaping back into the fight. This prey merited caution and respect.

It looked warily at Butler and gave out a loud roar.

"Yeah, yeah, you're real scary. Now, step away from her and towards me."

The troll was suspicious and curious. What did the human want with him? Butler's gentle tones induced it forwards, and its eyes narrowed as a thought occurred. "What if this was a -"

Then, Butler struck. He swung the lance directly into the flesh above the troll's eyebrows, which as he had correctly deduced was a vulnerable portion of the troll's body. Then again, how many victims of trolls thought of attacking its face, especially since they were usually several feet shorter?

The troll roared in pain, but before it could react, Butler brought his Sig Sauer to bear above its other eyebrow and pressed the trigger. Several muted shots rang out as the bullets sank into the flesh.

'The slaughter begins,' Butler thought dispassionately as he dealt a front-snap kick at the troll's belly, and it toppled downwards. While the troll was stuck in agonizing pain, Butler unsheathed his sword from the suit and furiously hacked away at its stomach. The sword slashes were accompanied by Neutrino blasts; periodically, Butler applied renewed pressure on the eyebrow areas and emptied another set of bullets on the scalp.

"Let's see what your insides look like," he grunted as his stabs finally made some headway in the stomach area.

"Wait...leave it alive," Holly gasped.

Butler turned to her. "Captain, this is a dangerous moment. If I don't kill it -"

"No. You owe me, Mudman," she interrupted as she stood up unsteadily. "Throw it out of the house, back into the tunnels, but don't kill it."

Butler looked at her impassively. "Very well, Captain, if you insist."

He dragged the troll's body back towards the origin point and threw it down Mulch's hole.

"And don't come back," he shouted down the tunnel.

* * *

Foaly and Root had watched both fights by hacking into Artemis' surveillance feeds. Their reactions to the second fight:

"Incredible."

"Unbelievable."


	12. Chapter 12: The Troll with Two Heads

Chapter 12: The Troll with Two Heads

Artemis winced as Harry hit the wall with a loud "Thud!", and he stared at Harry's dented ribcage with morbid fascination.

He was shaken out of his stupor as the troll roared again. Without looking back, he ran as fast as he could out of the surveillance room. 'I need to find Butler.'

But before he could move further, a small voice in his head said, 'By that time, Harry could be dead.'

The cynic responded, 'Harry will be fine. He has magic, remember? He can just heal himself and go a few rounds with the troll?'

'After being smashed into paste? I doubt it,' the idealist argued back, gaining steam. 'Arty, if you leave him behind, you're a murderer. We Fowls may be thieves, but we aren't murderers. We do have some honor.'

Artemis gritted his teeth in frustration. 'If I'm supposed to go back and save him, what can I do?'

A desperate and stupid plan came to mind almost immediately. Artemis withdrew the Neutrino that he had pocketed earlier from his weapons room, turned, and fired at the troll, which was preparing to pound Harry's prone body once again.

As Harry had so astutely pointed out earlier, Artemis was a horrible shot. In this case though, accuracy didn't matter since the shot hit one of Artemis' surveillance cameras ('over a thousand euros and several filters from the fairy team's helmets,' Artemis mourned), and the resultant shower of sparks sufficiently distracted the troll from Harry.

With another roar, the troll began charging Artemis.

'Well, step one - distract the troll - has been accomplished. Now, I just need to stay alive.'

Artemis ran as fast as he could (promising to himself that he would devote more time to physical activity in the future if he somehow survived this) from the troll. His heart was beating as fast as a rabbit's as the troll gained on him, its lumbering steps getting louder and louder every second.

He stumbled. Artemis couldn't help it. He was afraid and running for his life, both of which were decidedly outside his areas of expertise. Scientifically, he understood that his brain was releasing adrenaline to induce a "fight-or-flight" response, which explained the rush of blood to his head and the way things seemed to be slowing down. But mentally, Artemis just hadn't experienced anything like this in his short life, so he was absolutely, utterly unprepared and terrified. And don't forget exhausted - 'I really need to take some physical education courses with Butler in the near future,' a distant portion of his brain observed.

The troll opened its mouth, revealing its rotting teeth, and let out a roar of victory. It had finally subdued its prey and now, as it always did upon catching its prey, would pound it to dust before eating it. Its plans were put on hold though as two bullets burst through the air and embedded themselves firmly in its skull.

"Artemis, run!" Butler's voice cried out. Artemis did not need to be told twice, and he promptly retreated up the nearby staircase.

Holly followed up Butler's shots with blasts from her Neutrino. Unfortunately, for the pair, this was a different species of troll; where they had previously been dealing with a bull troll, this was a mountain troll, which lacked the bull troll's tusks but in turn didn't have any fleshy vulnerabilities at all on the outside. So, the bullets and Neutrino blasts were mere irritants more than anything; they further angered the troll but caused minimal damage.

"AHHHH," the troll grunted, and in a burst of insight, it decided to throw its large club at the figures in front of it. Butler and Holly ducked just in time as a large club sailed over their heads and demolished the wall behind them. But before they could react further, the troll rushed them like an American football player after scrimmage.

"GARRARRG!"

Butler and Holly barely managed to leap out of the rampaging troll's way. "Captain, any suggestions?" Butler queried.

Holly shook her head. "I've never seen a troll like this one. It must be a wizarding variety, so your guess is as good as mine."

Any further conversation was cut off as they swerved away from the troll, which had been lumbering confusedly after its first pass had failed but had finally found them once again.

* * *

Artemis hated feeling helpless. Given his genius-level intellect, he was certain that he could do something to help Harry, Holly, and Butler in this situation, if only because the latter two couldn't hold the troll off forever, at which point he would be back on its menu.

'Think, boy, think! Use those famed neurons to figure a way out of this mess.'

Normally, Artemis would sit back and enter a tranquil, meditative state that helped him organize his observations and puzzle out solutions. But given the chaos surrounding him, he doubted that he would be able to do that. 'The only missing player at this moment is Harry, and frankly,' - Artemis winced at the memory - 'I think he's out for a while, regardless of whatever my sense of self-preservation was telling me earlier.'

But an idea sprouted in Artemis' mind. 'Harry was able to compel me easily because my thoughts were already swirling around a particular set of topics. Magical spells are fundamentally manipulations of energy, so if I were to focus my thoughts on bringing down the troll...'

So, Artemis closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and focused his might on smiting the troll. 'No, that's stupid. I don't have magic myself, so no amount of wishing for death upon the troll will achieve that goal. But there is a magic user in the house, who could do that - what if I focus my thoughts on healing him instead? He picked up on my thoughts earlier, and he could draw energy from my thoughts now.'

Artemis took a deep breath and directed his scattered thoughts towards a single idea - 'Harry must recover, Harry must recover, Harry must...'

He heard a crack of lightning below him. Artemis opened his eyes and saw that the troll had been thrown backwards through the demolished wall. Harry stood, looking considerably more hale and healthy than a few minutes ago, with his palms outstretched and smoking and his green eyes glinting dangerously.

'What do you know? It appears that those crackpot theories on the power of group meditation might have some basis in truth after all...'

* * *

Harry panted from the exertion of having fired lightning at the troll that had been threatening Holly and Butler. His bones HURT, his muscles ached, but he was still alive.

When the troll had pounded him against the wall earlier, Harry had been thrown into a world of pain. But pain was an old friend - Harry still remembered it from the days that Vernon had beaten him bloody and left him for dead in the cupboard beneath the stairs. Already, his magic was repairing the broken bones and limiting blood loss. It also helped that a dark-haired figure - _Artemis_ \- distracted the troll away from him before it could do any more damage.

But even with his magic, healing usually took _hours,_ especially for injuries of this magnitude. Harry had practically counted himself out of this fight when he suddenly sensed a growing mass of positive energy nearby. To simplify matters, Harry could see tendrils from that energy mass actively seeking him out, so it was just a matter of being open to it and accepting it. Harry welcomed the tendrils and used them to reel the mass towards him. As he bathed in it, he could feel the healing accelerate until his bone breaks had been fixed, and he was reasonably fit for fighting again.

Harry shook his head to clear off the drowsiness as Holly fussed over him and shot blue sparks at his ribs. "Harry, what in Frond's name happened to you? You were nearly dead just a few minutes ago - I saw your body on the floor and was trying to get to you, but"- she scowled - "the blasted troll kept getting in our way.

"My magic helped. Well, that and -" Harry glanced upwards in the direction that the energy mass originated in and saw a white-faced Artemis looking down at them all. He nodded once in acknowledgement, and Artemis bobbed his head in response.

"I received help from an unexpected source," Harry continued clearing his throat.

Holly looked confused and was about to ask him to elucidate further when a furious mountain troll reentered the arena.

"No time, Holly," Harry cut her off. "What's the plan?"

"The plan?" she echoed. "The plan is that you either join Artemis upstairs, or better, GET OUT OF HERE! Butler and I have got this under control; we already dealt with one troll, so this bugger is just a minor inconvenience."

Harry snorted. "No deal. I heard you earlier, you know. This guy's different from the one you fought earlier. My magic seemed to have some effect on it, unlike your weapons. Face it, you need my help."

Holly scowled as she and Harry dodged one of the troll's wild swings; Butler was currently attempting to stab its back but to no avail. "Listen, kid," she growled. "Be sensible, and get yourself to safety. This thing nearly killed you earlier, and you just went through a major healing. You need time to recover. Besides, you're a kid - leave the fighting to the adults."

Harry laughed. "I haven't been a kid since I was six, Holly. Since I realized that my relatives hated my guts just because I had magic. They called me a 'freak,' you know. They were right - I was a freak. But now, at long last, I have someone and something to use those powers for, besides my own survival. I am freak with a friend, with a purpose now."

He cut off further arguments. "We've had each other's backs for the last few weeks. I wasn't going to leave you behind earlier when you wanted to go back in and help these guys against the trolls. I'm not leaving you behind now, partner, not when you're fighting for your life."

"Sentiment aside," Butler interjected drily, "I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on defeating this creature because I am not sure how much longer I can just poke it fruitlessly with this lance. At some point, the lance will break, and I will tire."

Back to the battle then...

Harry turned his attention back to the furious troll. It was shaking its head to clear off the aftereffects of Harry's lightning blast from earlier. While the lightning hadn't actually penetrated the troll's skin, the light had been painful - trolls, no matter what species, HATED light and loud noises.

Harry seemed to realize this as he saw the troll rubbing its eyes blearily. 'We could try drawing it outside the manor, but it's still dark outside, so that's no use.'

He came to a decision. "Artemis," he shouted upwards, "throw your Neutrino down to Butler. Butler, Holly, shoot your Neutrinos at the troll. I'm going to amplify the brightness of the shots to blind the troll."

The trio complied. As Butler and Holly fired their Neutrinos at the troll, Harry created a bridge from his magical core to the flashes ejected from the Neutrino. Harry's perception of time slowed down to a crawl, and he could see the Neutrino flashes inch forward incrementally towards the troll, much like the progress bar on a website. His core steadily extended threads to the flashes, and once they were connected, Harry pushed his feelings, his _intent_ along the bridge: BECOME BIGGER AND BRIGHTER, BRIGHTER, BRIGHTER.

In the blink of an eye, time sped back up to normal, and Harry barely managed to wrench his eyes shut before two big balls of light hit the troll head-on. The troll roared in pain as the balls exploded; as it was, they were significantly brighter than the previous shots, so it had tried to cover its eyes with its arms. But the balls were too fast; the troll had only managed to raise its arms halfway when the balls collided with its head and exploded into a shower of bright sparks. The troll clawed at its eyes until they bled, hoping to somehow escape the light and pain. (Or for Lord-of-the-Ring fans, "The light! It burnssss us.")

The three combatants (and one participant who was literally perched precariously over the staircase) sighed in relief as the second troll finally collapsed to the ground in a quivering heap.

* * *

Quirrell had been observing the fight from the shadows, disillusioned. The Dark Lord had sent in his Death Eater strike team after the bull troll but before the mountain troll in the hopes that they would manage to take out Potter without necessitating his intervention. Obviously, that had been too much to hope for given the fact that the strike team never returned, so Quirrell had coaxed the mountain troll in to the manor and induced it to consequently wreak havoc in the upper floors.

When Quirrell had tried to argue for having the mountain troll help the bull troll beat the Mudman and the half-breed, his Lord had been most displeased and dished out a swift correction. 'No, you fool. Harry Potter is upstairs, and my foolish servants clearly have not managed to kill him. Take this troll upstairs now, so that we can finish the job and get out of here.' Quirrell had (grudgingly) complied - sometimes, he wasn't sure why he had struck a deal with the devil in the first place. Yes, he had been promised power and glory beyond his wildest dreams, but was that really worth the abuse and constant agony? 'The possession is ruining my good looks. And I have to wear this ridiculous turban! Soon, he will have me drinking unicorn blood, and my very existence itself will become a cursed one, much like his own.'

Unfortunately, today was just not Quirrell's day. As Harry and company defeated the mountain troll, Quirrell's secret frustrations boiled out for a split second, which was long enough for his dark master to pick upon. That second proved to be fatal to Quirinus Quirrell.

"You have failed me for the last time, Quirinus," Voldemort's voice rasped; he crushed Quirrell's feeble defensive shields, drained him dry of magic, and flew out of his withered husk towards the nearest powerful body - the downed troll's. 'I will get you yet, Harry Potter,' Lord Voldemort vowed as he settled into his new body. 'This day shall be mine.'

* * *

"Butler, is it safe to come down now," Artemis called out, his voice still high-pitched from the anxiety and fear induced by the entire experience.

Butler was about to respond in the affirmative when dark waves suddenly shot out of the shadows and entered the troll's body, which promptly began spasming and writhing. Butler and Holly took a step back from the troll.

Harry was about to do the same when his scar burst into fire. He sank to his knees in agony, clutching his forehead, as Holly rushed to him in concern.

"Harry, speak to me. What's going on?"

Gritting his teeth as the pain escalated, Harry tried to make out a response but was interrupted by a rasping chuckle from the troll.

"Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, my supposed vanquisher. We meet at last."

The trio looked at the troll in alarm. The last that they had checked, trolls didn't speak in clear English. They weren't supposed to be that intelligent. They also weren't supposed to laugh so creepily - just point, grunt, and roar.

As usual, Artemis was the first to realize what was happening. Safe in his perch at the top floor, he called out, "Lord Voldemort, I presume."

The troll turned around, and the four saw a head protruding from the troll's head. As the moments passed, it was gaining clarity and definition. The red eyes, snake-like pupils, the slits for a nose - even if he hadn't been adjoined to a troll's head, Voldemort still would have looked like a monster from one's worst nightmares.

"Silence, Muggle filth. You have no right to speak in this conversation between superior beings like myself and Harry Potter," Voldemort sneered.

"You know, _Tom_ , your arrogance seems to have only grown over the years," Harry ground out. This was the creature from his nightmares. Somehow, seeing Tom in person calmed Harry; there had always been a part of Harry that had wondered whether Tom and the related nightmares were just products of his freakish imagination, some evil corner of himself, but Harry saw the truth now.

"Do not call me by that name, Potter!" Voldemort roared. 'How does the brat know that name?' he thought fearfully.

"After killing that Muggle filth that sired me, I was reborn. I cast aside my old pathetic identity and became Lord Voldemort, the greatest wizard ever!"

Harry laughed. "Greatest wizard, my boot," he said mockingly. "So great that you went around raping and killing people who had no idea who you were and had no way to defend themselves from you? Killing grandmothers, families, and babies? Yeah, you're great all right - great at being a coward."

"How dare you call me a coward, Harry Potter! You filthy Mudblood, you aren't even fit to lick my boots," Voldemort seethed. He paused suddenly before adopting a cruel smile. "Did you know how your parents begged me to spare you? It was delicious - frankly, I truly enjoyed obliterating the life out of them."

Harry stared at him frozen. "You killed my parents?" his voice sounded out shrilly. "But my parents died in a car crash. What are you talking about?"

Voldemort stared Harry in the eyes. Harry felt a tickling sensation in his brain for a moment; it vanished as quickly as he had felt it, and Voldemort broke out into a laugh.

"You don't know. You honestly have no idea of who you are!"

"What are you talking about?" Harry retorted, annoyed. He knew that Tom was an evil Dark Lord and styled himself as a Dark Lord. He didn't understand what was so personal about this fight though. But he was starting to get an inkling.

Artemis hastened the process. He called out to Harry, "He's telling the truth. He killed your parents when you were one, but when he tried to kill you with the same curse that he used against them, it failed for some reason. If you reviewed the surveillance feeds, you would have noticed that Dumbledore referred to you as the Boy-Who-Lived - that's because you were the only one to have survived his unblockable Killing Curse."

"For once, a Muggle speaks some sense," Voldemort sneered.

Harry stared at Voldemort blankly. 'This shite killed my parents,' he thought with mounting anger. 'He's the reason that I got stuck with the Dursleys and have been alone for all my life.'

"I'll kill you," Harry roared as he shot his hands forward and launched a series of lightning bolts at Troll-mort. With grace that he wouldn't have imagined was possible for a creature as big as the troll, Troll-mort dodged the bolts. Summoning a wand from the shadows, Troll-mort waved it over the passing bolts and gestured at Harry. The bolts promptly changed direction and sped back towards their caster. Only Harry's quick ducking saved him from being incinerated.

"You have some skill, boy, I give you that. But you can't hope to stand against me, the greatest -"

"Oh, shut up!" Holly grumbled as she and Butler fired their Neutrinos in a coordinated fashion at the troll. Troll-mort captured the blasts with the tip of its wand and sent them flying upwards towards Artemis, who fortunately had the sense to duck as they burned a hole in the wall.

Troll-mort charged.

Harry concentrated, and a gold shield sprang into existence in front of Holly and Butler. Troll-mort _almost_ managed to rip through the shield but stopped in shock at the last second.

"Where did you learn to erect this shield, boy?" Voldemort's voice rasped fearfully from the back of the troll's head. He had personally designed this shield before his fall; Dumbledore mistakenly thought that he specialized in offensive arts alone, so he was planning to pull out this shield in one of their duels to pull one over the old goat.

Harry didn't even bother responding. He had made a mistake earlier by charging Troll-mort. Getting angry got you killed, sentimentality was a weakness. This was like a street fight - he had to think coolly and rationally. And the troll was just another big bully on the streets.

He pointed a finger at Butler's lance, which promptly caught on fire. Butler was startled for a minute, but since the flames weren't hurting him, he ignored them and resumed stabbing the troll, this time to great effect as the flames were transferred onto the troll.

Like before, Harry exploded the brightness of Holly's subsequent Neutrino blasts to blind the troll. Once again, Voldemort used his wand to redirect the blasts.

"Your pathetic Muggle weapons are no match for my power, you filthy creature. Let me show you."

Voldemort traced a series of shapes in the air, and they flew towards Holly. Thanking the stars that Mulch had brought a pair of wings with him, Holly quickly activated them and evaded the shapes, which gained a demonic red glow and continued to follow her.

Meanwhile, Butler recaptured Troll-mort's attention with another series of jabs with his lance. "Enough, Muggle," Voldemort roared. But before he could do anything, Harry directed the flames on Troll-mort's body to bind it to that spot. They wrapped him in a tight embrace and rushed downwards to the Earth, seeking purchase and a constant source of power. 'From what Holly told me, Earth is a good power source for magic once it has been manifested in a specific form outside the body. She never mentioned how hard it is to control the flames though.'

Harry's body was pouring in sweat, but he refused to give up. 'We WILL survive this.'

Troll-mort roared and struggled, but between Butler and Harry, he couldn't do much more. It didn't help that Voldemort had already exhausted himself greatly through the process of transferring his consciousness from Quirrell to the troll. So, he stared helplessly and furiously at the figures in front of him.

"Butler, grab his wand NOW!" Harry yelled. Voldemort tried to jerk the troll's hand out of the way, but Butler's speedy reflexes proved true - he snatched the wand out of the troll's hands and snapped it in two for good measure.

"Incoming!" came Holly's voice from behind them, and the two ducked. Harry inadvertently released his flame spell, and Voldemort let out a roar of triumph. The roar quickly transformed into a howl of pain as the hex that he had sent after Holly hit him head-on. Troll-mort frantically scratched at its skin as it erupted into boils; as the boils exploded, blood flowed freely out of the troll's body, pooling onto the ground beneath it. Voldemort knew that his host was soon going to expire, so he played his final card...

* * *

Harry was on his knees as Holly and Butler examined him for injuries.

"I'm fine," his slurred voice managed to make out.

"Harry, you just put your entire magical core into freezing a Troll with flame ropes. Without a wand. While it was struggling with its whole might against said ropes. _After you had just recovered from the pounding that it had given you_. Last time I checked, you'd need a doctor after just one of those," Holly said sharply.

Butler didn't know what to think. He was feeling a bit out of depth with the onslaught of trolls, evil wizards possessing trolls, and all. 'This is not what I signed up for when I swore to protect Master Artemis.' But he felt intense gratitude for the boy in front of him.

Artemis came down the stairs quietly and traded glances with Butler. He could tell from that glance alone that Butler was feeling grateful and extremely guilty - for a man of honor like Butler, it grated that these two had come back to save them even though they had been treated so badly at their hands. Artemis had always counted on Butler's loyalty, but he knew that he would be pushing it too far if he asked him to return their two allies back to captivity.

As Artemis cleared his throat, he suddenly noticed Harry topple fowards out of his chair, pushing Holly back with his flailing hands. The three stared at Harry in concern as the boy groaned and began standing up, seemingly against his will. Then, he raised his face to them.

 _"You didn't really think that I was going to give up so easily, did you?_ " Voldemort's voice hissed out of Harry's mouth. Volde-Harry swept his palm outwards, and the humans were blown backwards off their feet.

Holly spun with the blast and landed in a crouched position. "Harry, fight this monster. Drive him out of your mind!"

Volde-Harry closed his eyes and clutched his head.

* * *

Harry was fighting tooth-and-claw to regain control of his body.

When he opened his eyes again, he noticed that he and Voldemort were in a stone room. The room seemed as dank and dark as the dungeons that he escaped just a few hours ago.

"I am not one of your pawns, Tom," he proclaimed boldly to Voldemort.

Voldemort merely laughed. "You are nothing, Harry Potter. Just a little boy who was abandoned by Dumbledore and the rest of the Wizarding World at the doorsteps of the Dursleys to suffer for a decade."

Voldemort relished Harry's shock at that revelation.

"Oh yes. Did it not occur to you already that it must have been a wizard who dropped you off at the Dursleys? And where do you think they will return you to now after they regain custody? You are such a naive child, thinking that once you enter the Wizarding World, everything will be golden and happy. No, boy, they will return you to the Dursleys. You know how powerful Dumbledore is - his word is law."

Harry felt a rising sense of panic, and his control began slipping. 'I don't want to return to the Dursleys. They'll kill me within a day.'

Voldemort continued to goad it onwards. "Or maybe that idiotic Minister of Magic will assign you to Lucius or one of my other lackeys. He's practically in their pocket as it is. You will NEVER be free, boy."

It was a testament to the horrifying scenes that Harry had seen in his nightmares that he would have much rather preferred the Dursleys over a Death Eater as prospective guardians.

Voldemort's stentorian tones dropped to a seductive whisper. "But you still have a chance to acquire the freedom that you so desperately crave. You remind me of myself, you know. Both orphans, both desperately seeking control over their own fates at a young age. Let me take control of this body. Together, we can destroy these pathetic Muggles who captured you. Then, we can proceed to the Wizarding World and bring it under our control. We can rule together, boy, and you certainly have the potential to become the greatest wizard. This potential will become a reality if you join me, Harry Potter."

But Harry didn't care about ruling the Wizarding World or getting revenge. All he wanted was to be free to choose his own path in life. And if he let Voldemort take over his body now, that would never happen - like the dead wizard in the shadows or the troll, he would always have a master and would be used up till his death. "I am my own master. I am the captain of my fate, the master of my soul. I am not letting you harm Holly. Now, GET OUT!"

"Think, boy, think! I am the greatest wizard in the world! I can show you magics that you will never find in any of your tomes or in Hogwarts' halls. I could even bring back your parents..."

Harry stared at Voldemort, and Voldemort's breath hitched in anticipation. He had him now.

But Harry was made of far sterner stuff. He shook his head. "My parents wouldn't want to come back if it meant that I had to join you. They died stopping you, and I am going to respect that decision. Now, for the last time, GET OUT!"

The doors to the room flew open, and waves of magic filtered through. Voldemort didn't even have a chance to react as they slammed against his body and pushed him out with the force of a raging river. "No, NOOOOOOO!" he screamed out before he started to drown in the magic. He couldn't breath, he was suffocating, how could magic, his beloved, hurt so much?!

With his final shred of energy, Voldemort directed the magic around him into a vortex and used the swirling to eject himself out of the body, full-force.

* * *

Outside Harry's mind, Holly, Butler, and Artemis were staring at Harry's shaking body on the ground.

A few days ago, both Artemis and Butler would have just shot Harry to eliminate the threat as soon as possible.

'But he had to go ahead and save our lives,' Artemis thought bitterly. 'And my newfound conscience, which has Mother's voice of all things, just won't let me kill him after what we just went though.'

 _'He saved your Mother, too, you know,'_ his conscience whispered. ' _I'm pretty sure that Troll-mort would have steamrolled you, Butler, and Holly since only magical attacks worked against him. Then where would Mother be?'_

Butler stared at Harry's body stoically, thinking along the same lines. 'Had it not been for Harry, that troll and dark wizard would have pulverized Artemis and ripped through the rest of the house by now. And I wouldn't even be alive if it weren't for Holly.'

Holly kept a hand on Harry's shoulder. "Come on, Harry, you can do this," she muttered. Against her better judgement, she had grown quite fond of the little boy that had been kidnapped alongside her. Her mother had been a whale researcher, and after she had succumbed to a cancerous tumor which had been brought about by human whalers' pollution, Holly had harbored some resentment against Mudmen as a whole. Artemis certainly vindicated that resentment, but Harry had opened her eyes - not all Mudmen were alike. And now she was loath to let go of her friend, especially after all that they'd been through - from captivity to learning new types of magic together to fighting trolls and dark wizards.

Her faith was rewarded as a wailing mass of shadows flew out of Harry's body, smashing through a nearby window and fleeing the house.

Harry opened his viridian eyes, gasping for breath. He had won.


	13. Chapter 13: Gambits

Chapter 13 - Gambits

'We won. We outlasted the People and wizards' assault,' Artemis thought dazedly. 'That was significantly more difficult than I had expected.'

Holly looked over Harry with concerned eyes and gave him a fierce hug. 'He's already gone through so much when he should be like other Mudboys - riding bikes, playing with friends,' she thought grimly. Glancing at Artemis, she corrected herself, 'Then again, he isn't a callous bastard like that one.'

Breaking her hug, she helped Harry stand up, his legs wobbling. "How did you heal so quickly?" she inquired curiously. "From what I saw when Butler and I came up here, the troll had flattened you to paste. You shouldn't even be alive right now!"

Harry gave her a weak grin. "I've always healed quickly, especially after...you know."

"But even then, wizards' magical healing takes at least a few hours to complete. It's not like our healing," Holly argued.

"It isn't," Harry agreed. "But this time, I sensed a mass of energy coming from Artemis and was able to access that. His energy was aimed at me and focused on the idea of 'healing,' so it was easy for me to access even in my broken state."

"Group meditation," Artemis interrupted. "I had read a few articles about how people had reported feeling more active and energetic after meditating on happy thoughts in groups. The articles hypothesized that by focusing a group of minds on the idea of happiness, you are effectively creating a "cloud" of positive energy, which participants subsequently draw upon and benefit from. Personally, I thought that these theories were balderash when I read about them. The fact that Dan Brown included these noetic theories in 'The Lost Symbol' really did not help enhance their credibility."

He continued, "But I was a bit desperate earlier, and I remembered that you especially have a degree of sensitivity to ambient energies, as evinced by your ability to perform wandless magic unlike the rest of your brethren. So, I thought that if I could focus on thoughts of you healing, I could create a similar "cloud" of positive energy that you could use."

Butler looked at Artemis thoughtfully. "That would mean that we mundanes can -"

"Unconsciously influence energy flows, yes. That's about it though. We can't do what Harry or Holly can, which is to actually pull on those flows and transform them significantly. And to be clear, my reading suggests that this generally works only with groups. We were lucky that I was a bit desperate at the time and that Harry is highly sensitive to ambient energies."

What went unsaid was that Artemis was also far more brilliant than your average Joe or even a group of average Joes; given that this mess was partially his fault though, he did not express this out loud as he usually would have.

"Well, now that we've gotten past that, let's discuss our next steps regarding the captives," Artemis stated briskly.

Holly and Harry stiffened, and Butler's face became impassive.

A tug-of-war ensued within Artemis' head. On one hand, the two were his tickets to the gold that he needed to retrieve his father. On the other hand, they had just saved his, Butler, and Mother's lives when they could have easily abandoned them to their fates. 'It's certainly what I would have done.'

There was also the fact that, to a man of honor like Butler, re-imprisoning Holly and Harry was a repugnant concept. While Butler was unlikely to outright disobey Artemis (he was much too loyal for that), morale would be severely undercut, and Butler would likely question Artemis' subsequent decisions as the venture grew more perilous. 'And we still have yet to enter the most delicate stage of all...'

'At the same time, I need the gold.'

'Both Butlers would have died down there in the dungeons if Holly hadn't intervened. And, if not for Harry, I would've been killed by the Death Eaters, who by all accounts would not have shown Mother any mercy. Well, that or the troll - I can't decide who is worse.'

Artemis' icy-blue eyes met Harry's viridian and Holly's hazel ones. They stared at each other unwaveringly for a few minutes.

"You are free to go."

The viridian and hazel pair of eyes widened in shock. Artemis smirked at having caught his opponents off-guard.

"You both saved our lives at great risk to your own." He paused at that. "Thank you."

Now, even Butler's eyebrows rose. First, he was letting them go, and now he was thanking them? Was Artemis hit by one of the stray spells earlier?

Holly looked at him suspiciously, but Harry simply nodded in acknowledgement. As the two turned away and walked towards the entrance, Harry paused for a moment and turned back.

"I know what it's like," he said seriously, "to miss your parents."

A lump rose in Artemis' throat. At the same time, a wave of red started encroaching his vision. 'How dare he bring up my weakness?!'

"But take care to not become someone that they won't recognize or approve," Harry continued, "in your quest to get them back."

The red retreated. 'For all his criminal ventures, Father would never have stooped as low as kidnapping someone, much less a female and a child. I need gold, yes, but at what cost?'

As Harry was about to turn away again, Artemis remembered something. "Captain," he blurted out.

Holly turned back to him with a scowl. At the moment, she wanted to get out of the kriffing manor and get Harry to a fairy healer as soon as possible. She had already healed all minor scratches and injuries, and he seemed to have healed himself fine from the severe injuries that he had suffered earlier. But she still wanted him to undergo a thorough checkup.

"What, Mudboy?"

Swallowing his pride, Artemis said, "Would it be possible for you to heal my mother?"

Holly raised an eyebrow in surprise before shifting back to her scowl. Before she could respond though, Harry grabbed her arm lightly and gave her a pleading look.

With a put-upon sigh, she turned back to Artemis. "It depends on what she is suffering from. Mind you, this is normally not free, and I'm only doing this because you helped save Harry earlier..."

* * *

Mulch looked at the collapsed tunnel in satisfaction. During the second troll's attack, some of the unconscious Death Eaters had wakened, freaked-out at the sight of Troll-mort, and tried to escape the house by the tunnel. Unfortunately for them, the wards had returned to full strength, and their Dark Marks had effectively trapped them inside.

From his various ventures with wizarding smugglers, Mulch had heard about the horrifying atrocities committed by the Death Eaters. Mulch may have been a criminal, but he did have morals at the end of the day. "Bunch of inbred, child-killing, raping murderers," he muttered.

It didn't help that this particular group had willingly entered a mansion to kill two children and possibly a sick woman. Worse, one of the children had been Mulch's partner. So, on his way out of the manor, Mulch "accidentally" weakened a few supports. As the Death Eaters rushed through the tunnel, they had shaken those supports loose. They finally gave away amid the chaos that had resulted when the Death Eaters realized that the wards prevented them from leaving the tunnel. They might have stood a chance if Voldemort had been with them as his magic had helped lower the wards a bit earlier. But Troll-mort was busy upstairs at the moment, so they had no chance at all.

'20 - 25 mid-ranking Death Eater scum down,' Mulch thought satisfiedly. 'Might not have been able to help with the trolls, but I can do this much.'

'Now, time to get a move on before the LEP gets here, and Root realizes that I didn't die in the tunnel collapse.'

* * *

Artemis turned away from the retreating figures of Holly and Harry.

"Come, Butler, it's time for a change of plans."

"How do you plan to get the gold now, Artemis? I mean, we no longer have hostages, so there's no reason for the People or the wizards to acquiesce to your demands."

"We have a narrow window of time, Butler, within which we can manipulate the pertinent authorities."

* * *

Cudgeon and Fudge were currently playing the oldest game in the political playbook - point the finger.

"It's not my fault that your wizard team panicked at the sight of the troll and destabilized the tunnels," Cudgeon argued.

"Don't you dare blame our team," Fudge spit out. "They were handpicked by my liaison, Lucius Malfoy, and were among the best and brightest wizards that I have met. No, the problem was that your officer worked against them and ruined the whole effort."

Cudgeon snorted. Inwardly, he cursed Holly Short for aiding the Mudman Butler against the first troll. Thanks to Mulch Diggum's dying message, they had discovered that he and the wizarding strike team had fallen victim to a collapsing tunnel in their rush to escape the second troll's rampage. But they had no idea what had happened with the second troll after that.

"If you wizards just bothered to get with the times," he said condescendingly, "then we wouldn't be bickering like this right now. Instead, we could have installed some cameras around the second troll's area and could be overseeing the situation right now. You barbarians -"

Fudge lost what little cool he had at that word. Malfoy's lips curled upwards. While he normally decried such uncouth behavior, he approved Fudge's impulsiveness in this case - 'how dare that filthy half-breed call us barbarians!'.

Malfoy was not anxious about the situation in the slightest. The strike team mostly consisted of mid-ranking Death Eaters; while they wouldn't be minor losses, they would still be easily replaceable once his Lord returned to power and broke the Old Guard out of Azkaban. And the longer it took to get news about the situation, the more likely it was that his Lord had succeeded in his mission.

Foaly placidly wheeled a computer into the room. "Cudgeon -"

"That's ACTING-COMMANDER Cudgeon, centaur," Cudgeon said. His correction was undercut by his bloody nose and busted lip.

"Very well, Acting-Commander," Foaly acquiesced graciously. "The kidnapper, Fowl, wishes to speak with you. Apparently, his bodyguard also defeated the second troll."

Aside from Foaly, the entire room winced - Cudgeon and Fudge because their gambit had been a disaster, Malfoy because he was truly shocked that an eight-year-old, a half-breed, and two Muggles had defeated two trolls, a strike team, and the greatest Dark Lord in history.

"Get us online," Cudgeon ordered.

Foaly complied, and soon Fudge and Cudgeon were staring at a pale-faced youth. "Minister Fudge, Acting-Commander Cudgeon," he greeted them.

"Fowl," Cudgeon scowled.

"Yes, I am. Fowl is fair, and fair is fowl. At this point, after your bout of foul play, it is only meet that I reciprocate. I was willing to engage in a safe, fair exchange of hostages, but it is not to be."

His face grew colder, if that was possible at all. "I want 100 million Galleons from the wizards and 1 metric ton of gold from the People within the next hour if you want to see Harry and the Captain alive. I am afraid that they were severely injured by the troll and will die if they don't receive immediate medical attention."

"You monster!" Foaly blurted. He instantly quailed at Cudgeon's glare but did not regret his statement. Holly was one of the only friends that he had, so he was frightened by the thought that she was dying.

"Listen, Muggle, we don't negotiate with your kind," Fudge barked. For once, Malfoy looked at him with approval.

Artemis merely shrugged. "Then, prepare to kiss your office goodbye as your precious Boy-Who-Lived dies, and the public discovers that he was killed by your very own rescue plan. I realize that you wizards lack common sense, but this should be simple enough even for your papers - BOY-WHO-LIVED KILLED BY MINISTRY TROLL!"

Fudge's face purpled. Artemis ignored him and turned to Cudgeon. "And Acting-Commander - I'm giving you a chance to salvage the situation here. Give me a metric ton of gold, and I will return Holly to you. If you truly believe that I cannot escape the time-stop, then you know that you can get your gold back. After all, you people can't enter only so long as I AM ALIVE. So, it's a win-win situation for you."

Cudgeon sneered at Artemis, the wheels in his head turning. 'The Mudboy has a point. He's obviously insane for thinking that he can escape the time-stop, but all the better for me! At the end of the day, if I get Holly back, execute the time-stop, and then get the gold back, I would have done what Root couldn't - brought Artemis Fowl to heel and resolved the first People-Human hostage crisis.'

Artemis sweetened the pot for Fudge. "Minister, if I am just another Muggle as you believe, surely there's no harm in sending me the gold now. At any rate, between the time stop and the black wards, you should have it all back within an hour or two, if your beliefs about those two measures are correct. Or are you afraid of a mere Muggle?"

"Deal, Muggle/Mudman," the two chorused.

Unlike those two, Malfoy was mildly disturbed by Artemis Fowl. The determination and confidence in the boy's blue eyes reminded him of the Dark Lord; for all his faults, the Dark Lord was a brilliant wizard and had obliterated all obstacles that he had encountered in his magical researches, and the boy's gaze reminded him of that same tenacity. 'Is it possible that this Muggle knows how to circumvent the black wards and so-called time stop?' Malfoy wondered. 'No, it cannot be. He is only a Muggle at the end of the day.'

* * *

Using all of his clout on the Council (Opal Koboi was invaluable in whipping Root-supporters into line; Vinyaya was the only holdout), Cudgeon gathered the hostage fund within half-an-hour and had the trolleys loaded soon afterwards.

On the wizarding side, goblins were loading several carts with gold from the Malfoys, Notts, Greengrasses, Longbottoms, and other families hoping to gain custody of the Boy-Who-Lived. At the end of the day, Harry's youth ensured that he would be free from the blame for the entire situation; instead, the fallout would affect Dumbledore, who was ostensibly his magical guardian, and Fudge, who completely cocked up the troll operation. As such, the Wizengamot would decide guardianship of the young savior, and the pureblood families knew that there would be a massive spike in prestige for the ones who adopted the boy. The purebloods' generosity was also stoked by the idea of getting hold of the fabled Potter fortune.

Of course, for the more light-sided families, this was the opportunity to protect and shelter the savior from their dark-sided counterparts and/or other threats. 'After all that he has done for us, we cannot risk losing him again,' they bemoaned.

The race to get hold of Harry Potter was on as Harry and Holly unsuspectingly drew closer to Haven, and Artemis prepared to receive his gold at long last.


	14. Chapter 14: When Harry Met Dumbledore

Chapter 14: When Harry Met Dumbledore

Holly glanced back at the eight-year-old passenger in the shuttle. "Doing ok, there?"

Harry smiled back at her joyfully. "This is awesome," he shouted back to her over the engines' roaring noise. "You have got to teach me how to drive one of these."

'A being after my own heart,' she thought sardonically. Nevertheless, she felt pleased whenever Harry let out a whoop of exhilaration, giving her voice to her own feelings, as she pulled off a risky loop or just barely made it past a magma vent. 'If only I was able to salvage a newer shuttle rather than this old piece of junk...'

Holly knew that she wouldn't be able to take Harry with her into Haven itself, so she had already radioed ahead and gotten Root to bring a medic over to the shuttle port, which was pressure-stabilized for human entry.

"So, I heard the radio operators call you the LEP test case? Why is that?" Harry inquired curiously.

"Because I am the first female Recon officer."

"Whoa!" Harry exclaimed with wide-eyes.

Holly chuckled. "Yeah, I still can't believe it myself some days; it's truly an honor. I beat out that bimbo, Lily Frond; she couldn't even hold a Neutrino properly. Sometimes though, my status is a bit more trouble than it's worth."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked bemusedly.

"Well, remember I told you about how I messed up badly at Hamburg? If I was a male officer, I would probably have gotten away with a slap on the wrist. But since I'm the test case, I got put on desk duty until I was deployed to handle a rogue troll in Italy. That troll was the reason that my magical reserves got depleted recently, which is why I was in the grove the other day before we got kidnapped."

Harry knew from personal experience that adults almost always handed out punishments unfairly. But he didn't understand why they would treat Holly differently from her male colleagues and said so.

"Well, Harry, it really goes back to being the test case. They didn't want to seem too lenient, in case a male officer complained that I was getting special treatment because I was female."

"But that's stupid - you are getting special treatment since you're female, just "harsher" rather than more lenient," Harry objected with a frown.

Holly laughed. She was glad that, for all his maturity and hardness from living on the streets, Harry still had the refreshing honesty and clarity of his age. "Yeah. But we adults don't really do the most sensible things at times."

"How about 'never'?" Harry said impishly.

"Watch it, kid!" Holly chuckled. "Anyway, can you really say that kids are always sensible? I mean, just look at Artemis!"

Harry winced. "Point taken."

* * *

"End of the ride," she called out to Harry. During the trip to the port, Holly had been wondering in the back of her mind about Harry's fate. She wanted to make sure that he didn't have to go back to fending for himself on the streets, and from what she had seen of the wizards, they seemed extremely concerned about his welfare. 'Maybe they'll get him a responsible guardian? Not sure how he ended up with the Dursleys, but we can oversee the process and ensure that cluster**** doesn't happen this time.'

As the shuttle doors opened, Holly saw a welcome sight - the beet-red face of Commander Root.

"Holly," Root blurted, giving her a quick hug. He leaped back quickly and recovered his professional mien. "Er, ahem, it's good to see you both alive and safe. We stopped getting any news after the second troll broke in. For the record, I was against the idea."

"Good, I hope you were," she said with a scowl. "Those two trolls and the wizard strike team nearly killed us."

Root responded bitterly, "Well, Captain Short, at the moment, I am former LEP Commander Root. Cudgeon was appointed the Acting-Commander."

Holly groaned and face-palmed. That explained everything, given that Cudgeon couldn't see anything past his ambition. The elf was a glory-hound, looking for a quick way to resolve the situation and reap the rewards without actually thinking it through and considering the consequences.

"Wonderful," she said through gritted teeth. "What is his next plan? Blue-rinse Fowl Manor on the off-chance that Harry and I survived? Send in a goblin armada?"

"Nope - accede to Fowl's request," Foaly's cackling voice echoed through the shuttleport.

He walked up to Holly and gave her a brief hug. "It's good to see you back in one piece, Captain," he said with a cough.

"Good to be back, Foaly. Medic, could you please examine my fellow hostage?"

With a nod, the fairy healer took Harry's hand gently and pulled him away from the police officers.

"Holly, we should get you checked over as well." Root said tersely.

"Sir, I'm doing -"

"Holly, you were just held hostage for several weeks by a Mudman and survived two trolls. I am ORDERING you to undergo a medical examination now."

"After you debrief me on the second troll, sir. You did see what happened through my helmet cameras, right?"

"Seeing, working on believing," Root said, rubbing his eyes blearily. "If you had told me a month ago that I would see a human take on a troll and win or that I would see a wand-waving, pointy-hat-type of wizard possess a troll and become a second head on that thing, I would have fired you from the force and committed you to Argon's Clinic."

Holly coughed. "Well, I am glad that you got a chance to view the video, Sir. I think that the most salient point of that attack was that the "second head" was Lord Voldemort, and he is targeting -"

"Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, yes. Dumbledore apprised me about his situation and status within Wizarding society, Captain," Root said, his expression turning sour. "I suppose that he escaped his minders as a part of some temper tantrum and stumbled into this whole mess. It's his own fault."

Holly couldn't help but burst out, "Sir, I don't know what lines Dumbledore has been feeding you, but Harry was a street urchin and was escaping from a heist-gone-wrong before this situation began. He ran away from his abusive guardians when he was six and has been living alone on the streets since then."

A silence fell between the two officers. "Wait, you're telling me that he was fending for himself and had no clue about other wizards," Root blurted in surprise.

"My impression is that he did not, sir. He was initially convinced that he was the only one of his kind, until we saw videos of your and Dumbledore's meeting with Fowl on the surveillance feeds, Sir."

"But he has such a fine degree of control over his magic -"

"Developed through necessity, Sir. The first time that he saw other wizards was when they were chasing him after a pick-pocketing attempt went wrong. He saw them firing lights from their wands and was scared by the effects of those lights on surrounding people, so he teleported himself into the entire kidnapping situation."

"D'Arvit," Root mumbled, rubbing his forehead. "Dumbledore assured me that he was in safe hands -"

"Sir, excuse my impertinence," Holly began, "but if he considers Harry's previous guardians to be 'safe hands,' then I would say that he's actually safer with Fowl."

"Let's wait for the healer's report," Foaly suggested. "That way, we will have some solid evidence to confront Dumbledore with."

"Capital idea, Foaly," Root said gruffly. "Now, Captain, please get yourself checked over by a medic. Vinyaya and I can handle the press."

"Will do, sir."

* * *

"You can't be serious," Holly said incredulously. "Why is Cudgeon still sending Artemis the gold?"

Foaly snorted. "Apparently, he has convinced the Council that we need to eliminate Artemis one way or another since he's embarrassed the LEP so badly in this whole situation. Might as well go for the whole hog, so to speak, by giving the Mudboy his gold and then prying it from his cold, dead hands. Well, that and they thought you were still in Fowl's hands and were on the verge of death."

Holly sat up. "What?"

He rolled his eyes. "Relax, Holly - Vinyaya and Root informed them otherwise as soon as Root got your radio message. Cudgeon should be getting word of Root's reinstatement any moment now, so we won't go forward with that insane idea."

"D'ARVIT!" Root's voice boomed through the shuttleport.

Glancing at each other, Foaly and Holly ran towards the steaming Commander. "Sir/Julius, what happened?"

Pointing a finger at Foaly, Root replied, "First off, donkey-boy, do not call me Julius. That's Commander Root to you."

"And secondly, Cudgeon has apparently locked himself in with the trolley of gold and is refusing to surrender his command. He apparently believes that this is some kind of trick, that you're still in Fowl Manor and I am just lying to get my position back."

"Sounds like the Acting-Commander went cuckoo," Foaly muttered. Root snorted in agreement.

"Foaly and I will go on ahead to handle the rogue commander. Holly, I am ordering you to stay here with the medics and Harry. Once the situation stabilizes, we can get you back to Haven."

Holly bit her tongue. She wanted to join Root and Foaly and take down Cudgeon on the front-lines - she hadn't joined the LEP to be left behind on missions or fill out paperwork. But at the same time, Root was already doing quite a bit for her in terms of smoothing things over with the Council and the public, so she trusted his judgment on the matter.

* * *

Cudgeon stared at the trolley full of gold feverishly. The rails would reach full power in just a few more minutes, and he could then send off the cart to Fowl Manor.

'Lies, all of it is lies!' he thought madly. 'Root just wants me out of the way, so that he can be the hotshot commander again. Well, not today, Julius old friend. I know what you're up to - Captain Short is still in that manor, I'm going to send this gold over and get her back, and then once Fowl is dead, we can retrieve the gold. I will be a hero, and the Council will honor me while imprisoning you for treason.'

Cudgeon heard a series of bangs, and his fingers tightened around his Redboy pistol. 'I'm going to take you down hard, Julius,' he vowed.

He was surprised as the blast doors hissed open seamlessly. 'What? I was expecting them to be blasted down. That's more -'

Foaly's head poked through; Cudgeon hid behind the trolley. Upon seeing the trolley, Foaly called out, "Commander, I see the gold, but there's no sign of Cudgeon. I'm going in."

'Fool - even I know better than to entire hostile territory without backup.'

As Foaly stepped into the room and approached the trolley, Cudgeon bounded over the gold and grabbed hold of the centaur, pressing the Redboy closely against his neck. "Move one step, and I put a hole through your neck," he hissed.

Root entered the room at that moment - 'perfect timing, Julius.'

"Julius, put down your Neutrino if you don't want me to kill Foaly here."

"Cudgeon, I am not lying to you. The Council has reinstated me as Commander, and Holly is back among us, safe and sound. We don't need to send the gold to Fowl."

"No, Julius! Stop lying to me! I'm going to pry the gold from Fowl's cold, dead hands, and the Council will honor me with the highest post as a token of gratitude for my expert handling of the situation!"

"Briar," Root said skeptically, "last time I checked, your troll stratagem was an unmitigated disaster."

"Only because your officer intervened on the humans' behalf, according to the wizarding strike team's reports," Cudgeon hissed.

"D'Arvit, Briar! Put the gun down, and see some sense, will you?"

Cudgeon snorted. "Accept it, Julius. I am better than you, and the fact that I have your post grates on your pride, doesn't it? Congratulations - that's how it felt to be me for the last -"

While Cudgeon monologued like any good villain, Root surreptiously aimed his finger at him. Unbeknownst to the madman, Foaly had armed Root with a false finger that would eject a knockout dart when it was knocked back. Which is exactly what Root did right now, with the aim of an expert marksman.

Cudgeon gasped as the dart dissolved into his neck. As he dropped to the ground, he activated the trolley's jets as a final act of spite. Root tried to jump after it, but he was too far away, and the trolley was moving too fast - it rapidly disappeared up the tracks, driving off towards Fowl Manor.

"D'Arvit! The Council won't be happy to hear this," Root swore.

Foaly shrugged. "Just say that Cudgeon had already sent it off by the time that we got here." Prodding the elf's prone body with a hoof, Foaly asked Root incredulously, "How was this guy ever your friend?"

Root shrugged. "Heh, he was always a bit of a drama queen, and I always found it a bit entertaining. Never thought that his theatricality would descend into insanity though."

"Also, about the dart - is he vain by any chance?"

"A regular ponce, yeah. Why?"

"Well, if he's on certain substances, let's just say that he can kiss his looks goodbye."

* * *

"So, Cudgeon is going to look -"

"As though he has face-fungus, yeah. Or imagine that he was bitten by a bee hive. Boils and swellings all around."

Holly, Foaly, and Root winced. None of them felt an ounce of pity for the disgraced elf though; after all, he had disobeyed direct orders from the Council, and worse, had sent off gold to Fowl. Never mind the fact that they would recover the gold soon - it was the principle of the thing.

"Commander Root," a healer's voice sounded from behind them. "We have the exam results that you requested for the human, Harry Potter."

"Well, go on. Spit it out," Root growled at the timid healer.

Clearing her throat, the healer stated, "He seems to have recovered fully from the beating that the troll inflicted on him" - she nodded to Holly at this part - "and is a bit exhausted from recent magical exertions. But he has a severe vitamin deficiency, and our scans show a history of malnourishment."

"He lived on the streets," Root interjected.

"Maybe so, but he's unusually tiny even for street urchins his age, which suggests that his malnourishment started well before his time on the streets," the healer ventured tentatively. "The vitamin deficiency covers vitamin D, which suggests that he didn't really get enough exposure to sunlight. But -"

The healer broke off at this point, looking simultaneously disgusted and pitying. "I am sorry, sir, but the worst part is a series of scars on his back. They seem to have been made by a belt, and -"

She handed the trio a photo of Harry's back. They were shocked to see the word "FREAK" carved prominently into Harry's skin amid the mass of scars.

"Sir, according to the bio you provided me, he was living with a group of Mudmen called the 'Dursleys' before running off. It is my strong recommendation that he would actually be better off on the streets instead of going back to those humans. Of course, I would personally recommend dropping him off at an orphanage after feeding him up a bit, so that we can get him a solid foundation, and the orphanage can pick up from there."

"Very well, Healer, thank you for taking the time to perform this examination. Please do not repeat these results to anyone," Root said gruffly.

"Wait, I thought that we were going to drop by Harry's room and talk to the Healer," Holly said slowly.

"No, Commander Root told me to report to him directly," the healer said confusedly. Root would have dismissed this trivial debate if it hadn't been for the dazed, confused look in the healer's eyes, which resembled the one displayed by _mesmer_ victims.

"D'Arvit," Holly and Root swore.

* * *

 _Twenty minutes earlier..._

The healer looked away from Harry in irritation and went to the door to address whoever was disrupting her examination. She stepped out and didn't come back in.

Instead, an blue-robed old man with twinkling eyes entered the room. "Hello, Harry. Time to go home, now."

Harry distrusted adults on principle. This was only exacerbated by recent events, namely the discovery that there were a group of wizards bent on killing him. So, Harry jumped down from the hospital bed and edged away from the old man. The two circled each other, with Harry hoping to position himself so that he could dash straight out the door.

"Who are you?" he said slowly. "And how do you know me?"

"Ah, of course. Forgive me for my hastiness, Harry. My name is Albus Dumbledore, and we have been looking for you for a long time, you see. Ever since you escaped the protection of your aunt's home -"

Harry could hear blood rushing to his head. "Wait," he said dangerously. "You are the one who left me at the Dursleys."

Dumbledore smiled benignly. "Yes, child, I did. You were safest there. After you fell Voldemort, I set up blood wards around your aunt's home, which worked with the sacrificial magic that your mother performed on you prior to facing Voldemort to keep you safe. Now, we must go."

"Safe from what exactly?"

"Why, Voldemort and the Death Eaters of course. Harry, we must leave now. We don't have much time -"

"I was NEVER safe there!" Harry erupted furiously. "Oh, Voldemort never attacked me there, but the Dursleys treated me like junk. They hoped that I would just drop dead. The only reason that I'm alive today is because I got out of there when I got a chance."

Dumbledore dropped his benign look and became stern. "Harry, you do not have a choice in this matter. If you want to be safe and don't want the Malfoys or one of the Dark-Sided families to take custody, you will need to come with me to the Dursleys now."

"I'd rather live on the streets than go back to that hole," Harry spat. He tried to run for the door, but a wand slid into Dumbledore's hand, and with a mere gesture, Harry was bound in ropes.

"Oh, Harry, why can't you see that I'm only acting for your own good?" Dumbledore said mournfully.

Harry concentrated on his magic; his core was almost completely empty after the fight with Troll-mort and had barely recovered since. 'Ambient energies,' he thought with a burst of clarity. He focused on the flow of magic around him and sensed two strong bursts - Dumbledore's own sickly-yellow core and a black core with the stench of death in his wand.

Desperate to break free, Harry reached out with his mind for the two cores and sucked in as much energy as he could into his core. Once his core had been refilled thusly, he thought, "Free me from these ropes."

Dumbledore stepped back in surprise as his ropes burst into flames. Before he could recover, Harry thrust his palms outwards, and a wave of magic burst out, throwing Dumbledore against the wall and holding him fast.

Harry knew that the sensible thing at that moment to do was to run. But he wanted answers - this man was the reason that he had been denied his heritage, treated like a slave, and forced down this path.

"Why are you so interested in me?" he said with gritted teeth.

Dumbledore was shocked by the boy's magical prowess. 'Even Tom couldn't perform wandless magic so proficiently,' he thought fearfully. 'I must stall him long enough to exploit a distraction and put magical bindings on him.'

"Isn't it obvious, Harry? You are the Boy-Who-Lived - your welfare is of great concern to the masses, and I am only trying to look out for you," Dumbledore gasped out.

"B.S!" Harry yelled out. "I was beaten to nearly an inch of my life at the Dursleys and treated like trash. Worse, they told me my parents were a bunch of drunken layabouts and had died in a car crash. I found out the truth from my parents' murderer of all people. Don't tell me that I was safe there."

"Oh, Harry, I didn't know -"

"No, but you could have checked, couldn't you?"

Dumbledore's blue eyes hardened, and the twinkling completely disappeared. "Very well, Potter, I might as well tell you the truth. Currently, I am at the top of the Wizarding World - I have guided the Light through its most trying times and will not let it fall. On that Halloween night, you, a mere babe, managed to defeat Voldemort. Not only did that indicate a high magic potential but it also brought you a great deal of fame and influence, almost on par with my own. I will not allow another Dark Lord to rise on my watch, so I placed you with the Dursleys to ensure that you stayed humble and moldable - which would not be the case if you were with a wizarding family."

"So, you had them adopt me because...because you wanted me to be your pawn," Harry said with disgust.

"Harry, you just fought Voldemort at his lowest point right now. Do you really think that our world can survive yet another Dark Lord, especially at the same time that Voldemort is building his own forces back up? I did what I had to; I merely wanted to shape you into my true successor as the leader of the Light."

Harry stared at the old man pinned against the wall. 'So, all my suffering...my entire life was a game of chess between two madmen.'

"There's a bit more, I'm afraid," Dumbledore rasped. 'This should push him over the edge and give me sufficient room to break free.'

"Voldemort went after you and your parents because of a prophecy. A prophecy that stated that a child born at the end of the 7th month would be marked as his equal, that he would have a power that the Dark Lord knows not, and that _neither can die while the other survives._ "

 _Neither can die while the other survives, neither can die while the other survives_ \- the line reverberated within Harry's head, and he fell to the ground, clutching his scar. Suddenly, he saw gaudy items flash by his eyes - a cup with a badger, a crown with a raven, a locket with a "S," a fancy-looking ring, a nondescript diary. The word, "Horcrux," pounded emphatically within his head, growing bigger with each passing item.

'I must have grabbed some of Voldemort's most prominent memories,' Harry realized, 'when he tried to possess me back at Fowl Manor.'

"All right, Dumbledore. What do you know about Horcruxes?"

Dumbledore stared at the boy with shock and no small amount of fear. 'How does he know?'

"Harry, where did you hear that word? Little boys -"

"I haven't been a little boy since I was six, Dumbledore. Now, start talking; there's a maniac after me and a prophecy saying that I need to kill the maniac."

"Ah - were you possessed by Voldemort by any chance at Fowl Manor?" Dumbledore asked with a gleam of understanding in his eyes.

Harry closed his eyes in frustration and imagined Dumbledore being squished against the wall. The old man gasped as the force pinning him to the wall started crushing his ribs.

"All right, all right! Horcruxes are containers for fragments of souls."

"So, souls are real? How is it possible to split a soul?"

"Indeed. To split a soul, one must perform a certain ritual beforehand and offer up a human sacrifice for that ritual. The more intense and personal the murder, the less painful it is too split off a portion of your soul and ensconce it within a container. Once it is done, the container cannot be destroyed by ordinary means - after all, souls themselves are eternal."

"So, how can you destroy it then?"

"My research suggests basilisk venom as the best resource - nothing survives contact with that venom."

'My god,' Harry thought as the final line of the prophecy came back to him.

"I am a Horcrux too, aren't I?" Harry asked softly. "That's why I have dreams about Tom - I was seeing his memories. And the preparations for the attack on the manor - I was watching that through _his_ eyes. And the possession - he was exhausted by possessing the troll as it was, but my link to him made it easy and effortless to move over to me."

Dumbledore watched Harry with concerned eyes. 'He knows too much, too soon,' he thought grimly. 'Time to call in reinforcements.'

Dumbledore whistled, and with a burst of flame, Fawkes entered the room. Startled by the sudden appearance of the bird, Harry released his hold over Dumbledore.

Dumbledore fell onto the bed with a "Thud!". He grabbed onto Fawkes, and the pair flew straight towards Harry.

At that moment, the door to the room burst open, and Holly, Root, and Foaly stormed inside. As Root and Foaly gaped with shock, Holly tackled Harry out of way in the nick of time - the pair grabbed at thin air and dissolved into a roar of flames before they hit the wall.

"D'Arvit!" Root swore. "What in the name of Frond was that all about?"

They all looked at Harry.

* * *

"Are you sure that this is the best path forwards, Holly?"

"Commander, the two most powerful wizards in Britain are both after me. One of them wants to outright kill me while the other wants to wipe my mind and keep me under his thumb. Given these facts, I'm better off alone, as I was before - especially in Ireland," Harry interjected.

Holly narrowed her eyes and scrutinized Harry carefully. "Commander, are you sure that we can't just set up a place for him in this shuttleport? I know he can't enter Haven, if only because the low air pressure and intense heat would kill him."

"Out of the question. Before the entire Fowl affair, there might have been a chance. Now - the Council and the public wouldn't hear of allowing a human within flying distance of Haven. The troll mess didn't endear the wizards to our people either, so Harry's status as a wizard isn't going to count for much."

"Not to mention the Council will turn Harry over to the wizards at the drop of a hat," Foaly added. "They want to wash their hands clean off the matter and return to the status quo. The sooner the wizards get what they want, the faster the Council can achieve this goal."

Harry gave Holly a wry smile. "Don't worry about me," he said warmly. "I've been looking after myself fine for the last two years now. This should be no different."

"Other than the fact that there will be wizards chasing you through the mundane world now where they were only looking in the wizarding world before."

"Well, that's there," Harry admitted. He turned to Root. "From your interactions with Dumbledore, can you say how powerful he is within Magical Britain?"

Root snorted. "They pretty much think that he's a god. The man is Headmaster, head of their court system, head of their international delegation, and so on. The light-side would die for him. Even if you're adopted by a neutral family, he can just use the courts to get you back under custody. And we all know that you'd be dead if the dark-side families got hold of you."

"What about the dwarves?" Harry asked.

"Even if he were alive, I wouldn't want to inflict Mulch on you as a guardian. The rest of the dwarves aren't like him - they're isolationists and strictly stick to the act of smuggling."

"The goblins won't help either," Foaly added. "They hate your kind and don't want to get involved in your affairs. While adopting you would be a fine way of sticking it to the man, wizarding laws see them as inferiors, so they can remove you from their custody."

Harry nodded. "So, that only leaves me with doing a runner then. What will you say if the wizards ask you about me?"

"We have witnesses who can attest to Dumbledore's kidnapping attempt. We can just say that you were spooked by that and managed to get past our guards," Holly said dismissively.

Harry nodded again. As Holly handed his knapsack over to him, he sniffed at it. "Is it just me, or does my knapsack smell fresher than before?"

"We put it through several filtration cycles," Holly explained. She added jokingly, "To get the mud out of it."

Harry's lip twitched upwards. "Right."

Harry and the three fairies stared at each other intently. Harry stepped forwards and extended a hand to Holly, who shook it energetically. He repeated the process with Root and Foaly, both of whom seemed surprised at his gesture.

"Commander, Foaly, thank you for your helping me. I know that you're putting a lot on the line -"

"Not to mention the fact that it's totally irresponsible of me to let an eight-year-old run off on his own," Root muttered undertone.

"But I just want you to know that it means a lot to me that you want to help me keep my freedom," Harry finished sincerely. Looking shyly at Holly, he stepped forward and gave her a warm hug.

Surprised at first but then embracing Harry back, the two stepped away. "It was a pleasure, Captain Short," Harry said softly. He turned away and walked off towards the shuttle.

"Wait, how is he going to get back?" Foaly inquired.

Holly started whistling loudly, and Root and Foaly turned to her with accusing eyes.

"You're not -"

She shrugged. "Hey, you're never too young to learn to fly the jammers. And he said that he really wanted to on his way down here..."


	15. Chapter 15: Victory

Chapter 15: Victory

Artemis could hear the 1812 Overture playing somewhere as he saw the two trolleys of gold enter the manor.

'1 metric ton of gold from the fairies,' he thought looking at the trolley on the left. 'And 100 million Galleons,' he thought looking at the trolley on the right.

Artemis sobered himself quickly. 'For all I know, the Galleons are leprechaun gold.'

"Butler."

Butler took out a knife and tested both a bar from both sets of gold. He nodded to Artemis upon noticing that he was able to easily cut it.

Artemis took his laptop and used the attached webcam to survey for abnormal electro-magnetic waves around the wizarding gold. 'None detected, so this isn't enchanted or fake. Are they really so confident that I will fall to the time-stop and black wards that they sent real gold over?' he thought with amazement.

Butler seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "Artemis, most people underestimate you based on your age alone. In this case, there is the additional fact that you are also mundane. And from what I saw while fighting the strike teams, the fairies were actually better fighters simply because they didn't think that I could nothing due to a lack of a wand."

Artemis looked at the wall-clock. "Two hours since my I let my captives go. Excellent time to check in." He switched on the communications link to the People and cleared his throat to get the centaur technician's attention.

"I believe that it is rude to -"

"Oh, you're the despicable Mudboy, Fowl. It's NOT a pleasure to meet you," Foaly snarked.

Artemis paused, thrown off by the centaur's disrespect. "You may have given me my gold, but I still have yet -"

Foaly scowled at the pale human. "Holly and Harry are back. The wizards may have been stupid enough to have sent you the gold ages ago, but we nearly stopped our shipment to you."

"Nearly being the operative word," Artemis retorted with his vampire smile. "Nearly does not win any races or buckets of food, fairy."

"I'm a centaur. See the hooves?"

"Fairy, centaur," Artemis dismissed. "Mere technicalities."

Foaly scowled. "You're not going to get away with this, you know. Since, I actually have a heart unlike you, I'll give you a fair warning - we're going to initiate the time-stop in a few minutes and execute the blue rinse shortly afterwards."

Artemis raised his eyebrows at the centaur, amused. "And you're warning me out of the goodness of your heart? What have I done to merit that?"

Foaly leaned in close to the camera. "Listen, Mudboy, I am only warning you because Holly seems to feel that there are still innocents within that manor and that blue-rinsing is overkill. At the end of the day, I think you deserve worse, but she's a friend, which is the only reason that I'm doing this. You're going to be dead soon, anyway, so it doesn't really make a difference."

Artemis chuckled slowly. The hairs on Foaly's neck stood up as the boy leaned in close to the camera and gave the centaur full exposure to his icy blue eyes. "While I appreciate the effort on her behalf, centaur, rest assured - I do not intend to abandon the manor. My associates and I will survive, and this gold will be ours to keep."

"What about the wizarding gold?" Foaly found himself asking.

"The idiot Fudge is so confident in his black wards that he swore an Unbreakable Vow stating that neither he nor other wizards would endeavor to part me from my gold if I somehow survived. Besides that, I just had to threaten to leak the videotape of the entire troll incident to the Irish Ministry - I'm sure that they would be very interested in knowing that the British Ministry had authorized an illegal raid on their territory. If he lets me keep the gold, I can defuse tensions between the two governments, passing off recent disturbances as magical demonstrations and friendly tournaments on my property. I've even offered to broker regular meetings between the two Ministries' representatives on my property."

"Mark my words, centaur - the gold is MINE now."

"Are you really willing to bet your life on that?" Foaly said incredulously.

Artemis shrugged. "If I win, then I'm a prodigy. If I lose, then I'm crazy. That's the way that history is written, and I intend to show up in the history books, one way or another."

* * *

As Foaly triggered the activation sequence for the time-stop and bio-bomb, he couldn't stop himself from asking Root, "Julius, what if this is a trap, and we're walking straight into it?"

"Foaly, there is no way that Fowl can survive the bio-bomb. Even if he somehow miraculously does so, he still has to contend with the black wards," Root said soothingly. "The Mudboy is dead, one way or another."

Foaly nodded and glanced briefly at Holly. Holly looked over the proceedings impassively. She had tried to argue with Root about the necessity of the bio-bomb, but he had dismissed her concerns, claiming that she was suffering from mild Stockholm Syndrome. "Don't worry, it'll pass - but we can't let those people go, you see. They know about us, and they took our gold. Now, we need to send a message and clean up all loose ends."

As the sequence hit '0', and the bomb was fired towards Fowl Manor, Holly couldn't help feeling a moment of pity. 'What a waste of life and potential,' she thought. 'For all his cruelty and genius, in the end, Artemis is just another mortal. And no man is safe from Death.'

* * *

"Butler, I think that this occasion calls for celebration. Bring out the champagne, will you?"

"Artemis -" he began. Butler wanted to reprimand the young master, saying that he was too young for alcoholic drinks. But Artemis waved off his concerns. "Just this once, Butler. To toast a job well done, eh?"

Sighing, Butler acceded to the Master's requests. As he began pouring the liquor, Juliet trudged up the stairs.

"Ah, Juliet, there you are! You missed all the excitement earlier," Artemis called out exuberantly. "Do join us, will you?"

Butler eyed Artemis suspiciously. The boy's behavior was a bit odd, to say the least. He poured champagne for himself and Juliet but did not raise his cup to his lips.

Juliet had no such concerns. She drained her cup dry within seconds. "Dom, what's up?"

Artemis looked Butler in the eye. "Butler, I must insist that you join me in this celebratory drink."

Butler sighed and complied. He instantly recognized the strong taste of the tranquilizer in the drink but refrained from snapping Artemis' neck in the few remaining seconds of consciousness that he had. 'No need to unduly distress Juliet.'

Artemis watched Butler and Juliet slump into their seats within seconds of each other. He regretted the deception that he played on the two, but it was necessary. 'All for their survival, after all.'

He eyed his cup nervously. 'Hopefully, my theory about the time-stop is correct. And while the temporary breakdown in the wards was regrettable earlier, if my observations of the cause were correct, it should help me now.'

"Aurum potestas est." Reciting the Fowl family motto, Artemis finally drained his cup dry and fell into a deep, untroubled sleep for the first time in years.

* * *

The LEP's top fairies and the Ministry wizards landed on the empty road in front of Fowl Manor and cautiously approached the fortress. Even if Fowl and Butler were ostensibly dead, they didn't want to take any chances. After all, Butler had threatened to pump successive invaders full of lead, and it was unwise to tempt him or fate.

As soon as the team stepped across the wards, the wizards collapsed into spasms on the ground, and the fairies instantly began retching uncontrollably. Only Holly remained unaffected.

Crouching by the heaving figure of Root, Holly enquired concernedly, "Sir, are you ok?"

Root managed to groan out, "D'Arvit! He's still -," before promptly returning to his retching.

"Unbelievable," she breathed. "I'll go in and make sure of that, sir. I'm not bound by Fowl's words, sir, since kidnapping me was practically an everlasting open invitation."

As Holly walked into the manor and passed the glaring portraits of past Fowls, she felt sorely tempted to take out her Neutrino and let loose a few blasts to wipe off their smug smiles.

She entered the living room and saw the gold stacked neatly in rows. 'Good old Butler - always so neat and disciplined. The man who took on the troll.'

"Sir, I found the gold," she spoke to her comlink.

There was a pause before Root responded. "Leave it, Captain. You know the rules."

"Sir -"

"Captain, he's won - fair and square. Leave it."

Holly took a look around the room. Artemis may have won today, but a big ball of hatred had been borne here. 'Watch out for your back, Mudboy, because someday you will overreach, and when you do, I will be waiting right behind you,' she vowed.

* * *

"Wake up, Artemis."

Artemis groggily opened his eyes to his bodyguard's stern visage. He had seen Butler direct that look to others before; usually, that look was followed by a world of hurt for those on the receiving end. Now that it was being directed towards him, Artemis could understand what made it so scary.

"Butler, wait, I can explain."

"I certainly hope you can, Artemis," Butler said dangerously. "Because I want to know why you drugged us all while we were toasting the successful completion of the mission."

Artemis considered his actions and concluded that he HAD gone too far this time. "Very well, Butler. My researches into the Book suggested that the only way to escape the time-stop was to fall into a deep sleep."

"Sleep," Butler echoed skeptically.

Artemis nodded excitedly, enthusiastically entering lecture mode. "Yes, Butler, sleep. 'The Mudman shall lie asleep forevermore with his gold.' Now, the common interpretation is that he will lie dead with his gold. But in this case, the Book is actually being literal - by falling asleep with his gold, the Mudman is moving out of the time stop and therefore gets to keep it forever."

To reassure Butler, Artemis continued, "The original purpose of the time-stop was to assist San D'Klass, one of the Elfin King Frond's chief lieutenants, when he delivered gifts to Mudmen."

"San D'Klass...is that -" Butler asked slowly.

"Yes, old friend. That is the basis for our stories about Santa Klaus and Christmas. Frond hoped to assuage human greed by handing out gifts, but he should have known better - that only stoked our greed further. At any rate, they had to enter our houses and leave behind gifts, surreptitiously, all within one night. That is where the time stops came in."

"So, while the humans stayed asleep, and time moved normally for them," Butler realized.

"the elves would operate within the time-stop, come into the house, and leave behind the gifts, yes," Artemis finished.

Butler shook his head and looked at Artemis with renewed respect. The young Master Fowl was truly a chip off the old block.

"One other thing," Butler said slowly. "How did we get past the black wards then?"

Artemis chuckled. "Our captive, Harry Potter, helped us with that. When he used his blood on the ward-stones, he unknowingly declared this place his home and added blood wards to our ward matrix."

"But wouldn't the black wards just overwhelm all existing wards and trap us inside?"

"That is what wizards generally believe, yes. But old friend, they've never deployed black wards against blood wards before. Blood wards are almost never used because they require a steep price - an act of sacrifice."

To allay Butler's confusion, Artemis spoke more directly. "Harry's mother sacrificed herself to protect him from Lord Voldemort. I assume that she performed some sort of blood magic ritual, and her sacrifice was the final component. The results of the ritual protected Harry that night, and he continues to carry its power within his blood. So, when he shed his blood on those ward-stones, -"

"Some of that power was transferred over to them. So, that's what you mean by blood wards overpowering black wards," Butler completed.

Artemis nodded. What Artemis did not say aloud was that Fowl Manor was now among the most impregnable fortresses in the wizarding world due to Harry's blood wards. So long as Harry did not explicitly dissolve his ties to the place, the wards would continue protecting the Fowls from adversarial wizards, particularly the Death Eaters. Of course, this also meant that if Harry had been tied to some other place by blood wards, those wards would have effectively dissolved since he now had a new home.

"Artemis, I have two requests for you."

Artemis guessed one request immediately. "Agreed, old friend. We shall restrict ourselves to more tasteful ventures (read, no kidnapping). Legal, I cannot promise. What was your other request?"

"Reach out to Harry. He saved our lives twice over today."

Artemis stared steadily at Butler before nodding. "I will. I can't guarantee that he will ever willingly return here, but I can talk to him."

For the moment, it was good enough for the manservant. He nodded and moved to rouse his sister.

Artemis turned away and looked up the stairs with equal parts hope and trepidation. Did the Captain's magic work?

As he climbed the stairs, he heard someone singing. 'Is it just me, or is the room actually brighter?' he thought dazedly.

"Arty! It's so good to see you," he heard a melodious voice cry out. The next thing he knew, Artemis was wrapped in a strong, warm hug.

'It's been, what, two years, since I was last hugged like this.'

"Mo-Mother," he stammered out.

Angeline stepped back from her hug and crouched to make eye-contact with Artemis. "Arty, I'm so sorry about the last two years," she said quietly. "I haven't been myself for a while, but that's going to change from now on. I promise."

Artemis nodded, and he could feel his eyes getting suspiciously wet. Thankfully, his mother ignored that and called out to Butler cheerfully. "Butler, get me in touch with my accounts manager and the nearest beauty parlor. Goodness knows that I've been trapped in that room for ages!"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And do get Juliet to get rid of all these drapes! I feel as though I am in funeral parlor," she cried out.

Turning back to Artemis, she inquired, "So, Arty, you must tell me - how is school going? Are you doing well in your classes? Have you made any friends?"

As Artemis manufactured responses on auto-pilot, he thought dazedly, 'My entire life is going to change. It just got that much harder for me to execute my schemes and to restore the Fowl Empire to its former glory.'

Then again, he was a Fowl. What was an obstacle today would become a stepping-stone in time. He would succeed at all costs.

Gazing upwards at his mother though, Artemis allowed himself to forget about the Empire for once and instead focused on actually enjoying Christmas for once.


	16. Chapter 16: Epilogue

Chapter 16: Epilogue

Artemis stared at the pile of gold as a debate raged inside his head. As he heard his mother's voice call out to him again - "Arty, we are leaving now! You can't spend all of Christmas day in front of that laptop of yours!" - he came to a decision.

* * *

As the technicians worked on dismantling the rails, they were surprised when a trolley came careening down the tunnel from Fowl Manor.

They alerted their superiors, and an LEP bomb disposal team was sent down to investigate the cart.

No one noticed when a small figure broke off from the team with a few sacks filled with the contents of the cart. Foaly would have a few theories later on, but Root preferred hard facts and usually shouted at him whenever he went over to sound out a theory, so Foaly kept quiet. Needless to say, Foaly would eventually track that figure down to a "Lance Digger" in Los Angeles.

Once the team had declared the cart free of any bugs or booby traps, Holly, Root, and Foaly went in to examine it. They saw slightly less than half of the gold that the People had sent to Artemis. There was also a sticky note on the gold - "For services rendered by the Captain. Merry Christmas."

* * *

Minister Fudge slammed his cup of Firewhiskey down onto the table.

"Another, Rosmerta!" he cried out drunkenly.

The barmaid shook her head at the disgraced politician in disapproval but nevertheless complied.

After Harry had escaped yet again, the Daily Prophet had turned against Fudge, blasting him for being stupid enough to gamble various Ancient Families' fortunes on the safe return of Harry Potter without first verifying that Harry was still in Fowl's custody. As usual, Fudge had turned frantically to Malfoy for support, but Malfoy claimed in an exclusive interview with Rita Skeeter that Fudge had acted completely against his advice. "I provided him with a majority of the funds that he need for reelection, but in return, he wasted my time by soliciting advice and then promptly acting against it," Malfoy claimed in a put-upon manner in the interview.

Dumbledore had been so furious about Potter's escape that he had exploited the Prophet's attacks by calling for a Wizengamot vote to remove Fudge from power for "gross incompetence." The Wizengamot had complied, and a vote was scheduled for the upcoming Friday. Fudge was currently debating whether he should just resign from office rather than undergo the disgrace of impeachment.

"Minister Fudge," a gruff voice called out. Fudge raised his bleary eyes from his cup and saw a small green-decked figure in front of him.

"Who're you?" he slurred out.

"Who I am is irrelevant. What matters is that I managed to retrieve some gold from Fowl for you, sir. I am your biggest fan and hope that this will help you win some of your popularity back."

Fudge tuned the figure out as soon as he heard "gold from Fowl" and saw the trunk behind the figure. Pushing it aside hastily, he clambered to the trunk.

"Yes, yes, yes," he crowed as he ripped it open and saw piles of gold. "I can still save my career. Thank you, good -"

He turned and saw that the figure had vanished. For a moment, he felt uneasy, but he dismissed that feeling and turned back to the gold. "I can stay in power. This is my ticket to redeeming myself in the eyes of the public. Oh, the stories that we can shape out of this -"

The idiotic Minister would be booted out of power the very next day itself - he nearly triggered a goblin rebellion by trying to deposit an empty trunk into the ancient families' vaults. "There's gold in there, I swear," the man screamed as he was dragged out by the bank guards.

* * *

A heavily-cloaked figure stood in the shadows and surveyed the goblin army in front of him.

"How soon can they be deployed?" it hissed out from under its hood to the goblin commander.

"Within an hour, sir," the commander replied professionally, its tongue flicking out.

'Disgusting creature. I look forward to wiping out this loathsome species,' the figure thought scathingly.

"Good. Maintain readiness. We will march soon, and Haven will fall."

Another figure was watching this entire play on a camera and giggled as the conversation drew to an end. "Oh, Briar, you are soooo evil..." it squealed.

* * *

Meanwhile, in Riddle Manor, another evil figure was creating its own plans.

"Sssssoon, Nagini, ssssoon, we will have Harry Potter in our clutches and shall be restored to our former glory."

* * *

Dumbledore stared at his feasting students wearily. On one hand, he had gained potential allies against Voldemort in the form of the People. But on the other, he hadn't been able to regain control of Harry, who now knew far too much about the game to be a mere pawn. No, the game had been completely thrown off-balance, and he would have to adjust his plans accordingly.

'New contacts and a hundred-million Galleons later, the only one who lost nothing in all this is Artemis Fowl. Let that be a warning message to my pureblood colleagues,' he thought, raising his goblet. 'Do not underestimate the mundanes.'

Subconsciously, he revised his initial impression of Artemis; the boy may have looked like Tom, but he was actually more a master manipulator like himself.

'Well played, Artemis, well played. But if you are anything like me, then this is only the beginning of our interactions...'

* * *

Harry wandered through the streets in his stolen sweatshirt, hood up to cover his face.

He heard Christmas carols ringing through the air and passed several glittering toy shops, but he ignored all of this. Ducking into a secluded alleyway, he hid behind a large dumpster, opened his knapsack, and leaped inside, foot-first.

He landed in a miniature version of Fowl Manor's alcove with a smile. He had been very lucky to find the spell in Rowena's journals, which took care of replicating the alcove's structure itself. Besides that, all he had to was extend the life of the space expansion charm on his knapsack and summon all of the tomes into the bag.

Harry gently picked up a small fairy communicator from the ground and placed it on a stand, so that the webcam was level with his eyes. "Contact."

A small red light blinked for a few moments before turning blue. The screen promptly turned on.

"Hello, Holly."

* * *

 **EL FIN**

 **That's it, folks. Thank you for taking part in this ride. It has truly been a pleasure to write this fanfic, and I have really found the reviews that I have gotten so far to be extremely helpful in improving the quality of my writing. I can see a marked difference between the beginning and the ending.**

 **A sequel, "A Tale of Two Thieves: Escalation," is in the works at** **s/11945061/1/A-Tale-of-Two-Thieves-Escalation**

 **\- darthtitan**


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